subject:"Re\: From Atheism to Islam"

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-22 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 21 Mar 2017, at 22:09, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

>> You absolutely insist on changing the meaning of the English  
word  "God " to mean "stuff",

> Where?

Oh I don't know, maybe every third post you've written in the last  
5 years.

Show just one, and we can continue.

Bruno

> I think you are imagining thing. You already know that  
computationalism implies that stuff does not exist at all.

And now "exist" and even "stuff" joins "God" and "theology" as  
words that have lost their meaning and thus are no longer words but  
are just ASCII sequences.

> " God, in the original sense of the greeks and [...]

TO HELL WITH THE GREEKS I said it before I'll say it again,  
the ancient Greeks were so ignorant they literally didn't know where  
the sun went at night, and yet you expect them to help us answer  
cutting edge scientific questions in the 21th century.  It's  
ridiculous!

>> Bullshit! If symbols don't have meaning then they are not  
symbols and you'd be justified in saying all Hilbert (or  
Shakespeare) did in his life was write squiggles on paper.

> You show that you have no idea what mathematical logic is.

I know what Bullshit is I'll tell you that. And I know that you  
can think of mathematical logic as just a game of squiggles  
if you want, and the same thing can be done with language.  
The sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is  
consistent with all the axioms of English grammar, but it means  
nothing. You're trying to make a connection between mathematical  
logic and our physical world, in fact you claim that one created  
the other, and you can't do that if mathematical logic is just  
a silly squiggle game. 

> Please read the 30th first page of any textbook in logic,

Is that the same page you were talking about before, the page that  
can perform calculations without being connected to a battery?  I  
freely admit I have not read that page, but then the scientists at  
INTEL haven't either.

> or ask question.

Why isn't the author of "any textbook in logic" richer  
than INTEL?

> We use symbol like "+" and "*" for pedagogical purpose,  
but in strict predicate calculs we use conventionally Fi^n for a  
sequence of n-ary functional symbols, and A_i^n for n-ary relational  
symbols, and we interpret them through mathematical structures  
called models.

That's nice. Tell me, do logicians think "+", "*", and  "Fi^n"  
have a meaning, or do they just think they're pretty squiggles? And  
if they do attach a meaning to them have logicians come to a  
agreement on what those meanings are? If not it would be rather  
difficult for one logician to communicate with another.  

> In mathematical logic, "meaning" is defined mathematically,  
and it works with any symboles used.

And the meaning assigned those symbols is arbitrary, but once  
there is a consensus on what a symbol means it's important to stick  
with it. Suppose you read a proof claiming to have proven  the  
Riemann hypothesis and found a error on nearly every page, you write  
to the author pointing this out and he responds with "You said  I  
made a error when I wrote 2+2=5 but I did not because it's true for  
extremely large values of 2". Would you suspect the author was  
trying to hide something?

> When Hilbert said he could use "glass of beer" instead of  
"point" it meant it literally.

He meant if language developed differently and everybody agreed  
that the ASCII sequence "a glass of beer" meant a point on a line  
then things would be fine, but if some people think it  means that  
and others think it means a alcoholic beverage then chaos and  
confusion result. Of course if your ideas are confused then  
confusing language is a good way to hide the underlying stupidity.

>> Do any of the squiggles on that paper have a meaning? 

>What is it that you don't understand?

I don't understand if any of the squiggles on that paper have a  
meaning , that's why I asked.  According to you mathematical logic  
is just a game in which one sequence of squiggles generates other  
sequences of squiggles, but none of the squiggles mean anything,  
they're just squiggles. I think you're maligning mathematical logic

 >> as I said, theology has no domain.

> In which theory?

In which domain?

> Stop playing stupid.

Stop asking stupid questions.

> God means the creator, or the ultimate reason, of everything,

That certainly wasn't the case for the ancient Greeks that you  
love so much, for them the Gods were more like our comic book  
superheroes. Today being the creator or the ultimate reason of  
everything may be a necessary attribute for God to have but it  
is NOT sufficient; first and foremost God needs to be a person,  
and a person smarter and more conscious than you or me.

> You participate with the fundamentalist

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-21 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >> 
>> You absolutely insist on changing the meaning of the English word  "God "
>> to mean "stuff",
>
>
> > 
> Where?
>

Oh I don't know, maybe every third post you've written in the last 5
years.

> > 
> I think you are imagining thing. You already know that computationalism
> implies that stuff does not exist at all.
>

And now "exist" and even "stuff" joins "God" and "theology" as words that
have lost their meaning and thus are no longer words but are just ASCII
sequences.

> > " 
> God, in the original sense of the greeks and
>  [...]
>

*TO HELL WITH THE GREEKS *I said it before I'll say it again, the
ancient Greeks were so ignorant they literally didn't know where the sun
went at night, and yet you expect them to help us answer cutting edge
scientific questions in the 21th century.  It's ridiculous!

>> >> 
>> Bullshit! If symbols don't have meaning then they are not symbols and
>> you'd be justified in saying all Hilbert (or Shakespeare) did in his life
>> was write squiggles on paper.
>
>
> > 
> You show that you have no idea what mathematical logic is.
>

I know what Bullshit is I'll tell you that.

And I know that you can think of

mathematical logic

as just a game of squiggles if you want, and the same thing can be done
with language
.

T
he sentence "
C
olorless green ideas sleep furiously
" is consistent with all the axioms of English grammar, but it means
nothing. You're trying to make a connection between
mathematical logic
 and our physical world, in fact you claim that one created the other,
and you can't do that if
mathematical logic
 is just a silly squiggle game. 

> > 
> Please read the 30th first page of any textbook in logic,
>

Is that the same page you were talking about before, the page that can
perform calculations without being connected to a battery?  I freely admit
I have not read that page, but then the scientists at INTEL haven't either.

> > 
> or ask question.
>

Why isn't the author of "any 
textbook in logic
"
 richer than INTEL?

> > 
> We use symbol like "+" and "*"
>  
> for pedagogical purpose, but in strict predicate calculs we use
> conventionally Fi^n for a sequence of n-ary functional symbols, and A_i^n
> for n-ary relational symbols, and we interpret them through mathematical
> structures called models.
>

That's nice. Tell me, do logicians think "+", "*", and  "
Fi^n
" have a meaning, or do they just think they're pretty squiggles? And if
they do attach a meaning to them have logicians come to a agreement on what
those meanings are? If not it would be rather difficult for one logician to
communicate with another.  

> 
> In mathematical logic, "meaning" is defined mathematically, and it works
> with any symboles used.
>

And the meaning assigned those symbols is arbitrary, but once there is a
consensus on what a symbol means it's important to stick with it. Suppose
you read a proof claiming to have proven  the Riemann hypothesis and found
a error on nearly every page, you write to the author pointing this out and
he responds with "You said  I made a error when I wrote 2+2=5 but I did not
because it's true for extremely large values of 2". Would you suspect the
author was trying to hide something?

> > 
> When Hilbert said he could use "glass of beer" instead of "point" it meant
> it literally.
>

He meant if language developed differently and everybody agreed that the
ASCII sequence "a glass of beer" meant a point on a line then things would
be fine, but if some people think it  means that and others think it means
a alcoholic beverage then chaos and confusion result. Of course if your
ideas are confused then confusing language is a good way to hide the
underlying stupidity.

>> Do any of the squiggles on that paper have a meaning? 
>
>
> >What is it that you don't understand?
>

I don't understand if any of the squiggles on that paper have a meaning ,
that's why I asked.  According to you mathematical logic is just a game in
which one sequence of squiggles generates other sequences of squiggles, but
none of the squiggles mean anything, they're just squiggles. I think you're
maligning mathematical logic

>
>> >> 
>> as I said,
>>  
>> theology has no domain.
>
>
> > 
> In which theory?
>

In which domain?

> > 
> Stop playing stupid.
>

Stop asking stupid questions.

> 
> God means the creator, or the ultimate reason, of everything,
>

That certainly wasn't the case for the ancient Greeks that you love so
much, for them the Gods were more like our comic book superheroes. Today
being

the creator or the ultimate reason of everything

may be a necessary attribute for God to have but it is *NOT* sufficient
;
first and foremost God needs to be a person, and a person smarter and more
conscious than you or me.

> > 
> You participate with the fundamentalist clergy
>

Wow,

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-21 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 18 Mar 2017, at 18:28, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

>>If Hilbert had insisted on equating the concept of a glass  
of beer with the English word "point", as you insist on equating the  
concept of stuff with the English word "God", then one would be  
justified in suspecting Hilbert was trying to hide sloppy thinking  
with bafflegab.

> Not at all.

Not at all? Not even a little? If Hilbert had absolutely insisted on  
renaming "a mathematical point" to "a glass of beer" I would suspect  
him of being a fuzzy thinker trying to hide something and no more  
trustworthy than a carnival huckster. You absolutely insist on  
changing the meaning of the English word  "God " to mean "stuff",

Where? I think you are imagining thing. You already know that  
computationalism implies that stuff does not exist at all. God, in the  
original sense of the greeks and of the philosophers might exist, but  
stuff can't, and that is the result of the proof given.

and so I have to ask myself, why would Bruno want to do that?

> His point was that a valid reasoning is independent of the  
word used.

Bullshit! If symbols don't have meaning then they are not  
symbols and you'd be justified in saying all Hilbert (or  
Shakespeare) did in his life was write squiggles on paper.

You show that you have no idea what mathematical logic is. Please read  
the 30th first page of any textbook in logic, or ask question.

We use symbol like "+" and "*" for pedagogical purpose, but in strict  
predicate calculs we use conventionally Fi^n for a sequence of n-ary  
functional symbols, and A_i^n for n-ary relational symbols, and we  
interpret them through mathematical structures called models. In  
mathematical logic, "meaning" is defined mathematically, and it works  
with any symboles used. When Hilbert said he could use "glass of beer"  
instead of "point" it meant it literally.

> I suggest you study the book by Mendelson. It is very good.

Good? How do you tell the difference between good squiggles  
and bad squiggles?
>>> You can approach *any* domain with the scientific  
method or attitude.

>> Yes but theology has no domain.

> Theology has the gods as domain.

Yes as I said, theology has no domain.

In which theory? Stop playing stupid.

> The statement that there are no god is a statement in the  
filed of theology, and I guess it is your theology

No my domain of study is all the integers greater than 2 but less  
than 3; I don't wish to brag but I am a great expert on those  
integers, I know all there is to know about them.

> assuming that a god needs to be a person.

Of course God needs to be a person because that's what the English  
word "God" means! God doesn't mean the multiplication table and God  
doesn't mean a cloud of Hydrogen gas and God doesn't mean "stuff". 

God means the creator, or the ultimate reason, of everything, mind and  
matter (real or appearance). You participate with the fundamentalist  
clergy in making us forget a millenium of fertile theology (which give  
rise to both math, physics and mathematical logic: I gave you all the  
references on this, and clearly, you don't read references.

> "Zero gods" is a strong theological statement.

So everything is theological.

Almost: theology is the science of everything, including the number of  
personal or impersonal gods and particles.

Meaning needs contrast, "everything is theological" is equivalent to  
"nothing is theological" in that neither statement conveys any  
information.

> Your own decision to freeze your brain belong to applied  
theotechnology, which is part of some theology.

As I say, if everything is theology then nothing is theology. I  
have a feeling you must like Trump because words don't have any  
meaning for him either, he just makes noises with his mouth.

This is how you proceed: by ad hominem insult only. It is simply not a  
valid way of proceeding, if this was needed to be said.

> All self-referentially correct universal machine which  
believe in enough induction axioms (Gödel-Löbian machines) has a  
theology,

And so my dear friends we are here to mourn the death of 2 fine  
words that once meant something but no longer do, "theology"  
has joined "God" in becoming just squiggles that have no meaning.

> you can already read my paper on Plotinus

Do any of the squiggles on that paper have a meaning? 

What is it that you don't understand?

Bruno

 John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-18 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>>
>> If Hilbert had insisted on equating the concept of a glass of beer with
>> the English word "point", as you insist on equating the concept of stuff
>> with the English word "God", then one would be justified in suspecting
>> Hilbert was trying to hide sloppy thinking with bafflegab.
>
>
> > 
> Not at all.
>

Not at all? Not even a little? If Hilbert had absolutely insisted on
renaming "a mathematical point" to "a glass of beer" I would suspect him of
being a fuzzy thinker trying to hide something and no more trustworthy than
a carnival huckster. You absolutely insist on changing the meaning of the
English word  "God " to mean "stuff", and so I have to ask myself, why
would Bruno want to do that?

> > 
> His point was that a valid reasoning is independent of the word used.
>

Bullshit! If symbols don't have meaning then they are not symbols and
you'd be justified in saying all Hilbert (or Shakespeare) did in his life
was write squiggles on paper.

> 
> I suggest you study the book by Mendelson. It is very good.
>

Good?

How do you tell the difference between good squiggles and bad squiggles?

> >
>>> >>
>>> You can approach *any* domain with the scientific method or attitude.
>>
>>
>> 
>> >> 
>> Yes but theology has no domain.
>
> > 
> Theology has the gods as domain.
>

Yes as I said,

theology has no domain.

> > 
> The statement that there are no god is a statement in the filed of
> theology, and I guess it is your theology
>

No my domain of study is all the integers greater than 2 but less than 3;
I don't wish to brag but I am a great expert on those integers, I know all
there is to know about them.

> > 
> assuming that a god needs to be a person.
>

Of course God needs to be a person because that's what the English word
"God" means! God doesn't mean the multiplication table and God doesn't mean
a cloud of Hydrogen gas and God doesn't mean "stuff". 

> > 
> "Zero gods" is a strong theological statement.
>

So everything is theological. Meaning needs contrast, "everything is
theological" is equivalent to "nothing is theological" in that neither
statement conveys any information.

> 
> Your own decision to freeze your brain belong to applied theotechnology,
> which is part of some theology.
>

As I say, if everything is theology then nothing is theology. I have a
feeling you must like Trump because words don't have any meaning for him
either, he just makes noises with his mouth.

> 
> All self-referentially correct universal machine which believe in enough
> induction axioms (Gödel-Löbian machines) has a theology,
>

And so my dear friends we are here to mourn the death of 2 fine words that
once meant something but no longer do, "
theology
" has joined "God" in becoming just squiggles that have no meaning.

> > 
> you can already read my paper on Plotinus
>

Do any of the squiggles on that paper have a meaning? 

 John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-17 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 08 Mar 2017, at 00:43, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 6:05 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

> You missed my explanation on "axiomatics". Hilbert took some  
times to explain it in lay terms. You might remember him telling  
that his geometry would not have its content change in case you  
change the vocabulary, like calling a point "a glass of beer" ...

If Hilbert had insisted on equating the concept of a glass of beer  
with the English word "point", as you insist on equating the concept  
of stuff with the English word "God", then one would be justified in  
suspecting Hilbert was trying to hide sloppy thinking with bafflegab.

Not at all. His point was that a valid reasoning is independent of the  
word used.

>> Can you name one short word used in everyday common speech  
that means something completely different if not downright  
contradictory when used in a scientific context? I can't.

> the word "theory" and "model" are used already in opposite  
sense by logicians and physicists.

What are you talking about? Everyday people, logicians and  
physicists all agree that "theory" means a set of ideas intended to  
explain something, and a "model" of a object is a systematic  
description and a model of a phenomenon is a artificial construct  
that produces that phenomenon or a approximation of it.

Not at all. In logic a theory is a set of sentences together with a  
set of inference rule, and a model is a semantic, that is a  
mathematical structure with a notion of satisfaction. I suggest you  
study the book by Mendelson. It is very good.

> Well, I see you have not understand the notion of axiomatics.

I understand that if Euclid hadn't bother to explain exactly what  
the words "point" and "line" mean his axioms would be meaningless.

Euclid did not get the notion of axiomatic. It came much later.  
Euclid's axioatic still relies on some intuition, and is not an  
axiomatic in the modern sense.

Philosophers waste time arguing if man has free will and forget to  
even ask what the hell "free will" is supposed to mean. And  
theologians squabble among themselves if God exists before they even  
agree what the word "God" means. This is just dumb. 

No, the theology of the greeks was already pre-axiomatic. The lack of  
seriousness only appeared when theology was abandoned by the  
researchers to the politics, where it is still belongs today.

>> But of course theology is not science, it's not much of  
anything.

> You can approach *any* domain with the scientific method or  
attitude.

Yes but theology has no domain.

Theology has the gods as domain. The statement that there are no god  
is a statement in the filed of theology, and I guess it is your  
theology (assuming that a god needs to be a person). But you have  
shown some belief in some impersonal god, like primary matter, it  
seems to me. "Zero gods" is a strong theological statement.

Theology has no field of study, there is no there there.

How do you know that? It is just your belief, I think.

Your own decision to freeze your brain belong to applied  
theotechnology, which is part of some theology.

> To make theology into a non-science, people have used terror  
and torture,

You don't need terror or torture or anything  
else to turn theology into a non-science, it got there all on its  
own.

All self-referentially correct universal machine which believe in  
enough induction axioms (Gödel-Löbian machines) has a theology, in  
the sense of the set of true, guessable, propositions that they cannot  
justify rationally.

That correct-machine's theology is arguable very close to the theories  
developed by Parmenides, Plato, Moderatus of Gades, and the  
neoplatonists. It is plausibly not a coincidence, as it could just  
mean that they introspected themselves sufficiently correctly. I am  
wring a paper on this, actually, but you can already read my paper on  
Plotinus (on my url front page). If interested, which I am not quite  
sure.

Bruno

 John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-09 Thread John Mikes

Dear John Clark,

it is in most cases very entertaining to read your topical summer -
 saults, no matter in what matter.
You, as most participants, DARE to go as far as "atheist", not further (and
I mean: you do not delve into the domain of the AGNOSTIC) - the starting
point of which is IGNORANCE in (al)most ANYTHING we talk about with pretty
little to claim some scientific doubt in (call it 'knowledge'?).

I deny the ruling power of the majority in any spoken language as to the
meaning of a word. It change/s/d so much that any observing moment is of
limited value. Besides you 'pick' a vocabulary from a limited choice of the
English-called variations for testimony.

I admire the broadness of information of the list-participants - which is
not like consenting.
Created the World? Well, IS THERE a World at all? Logically flawlessly?
Well, who's logic? And So On.

John Mikes
pushing hard at 95

On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 7:43 PM, John Clark  wrote:

> Bruno Marchal via googlegroups.com wrote:
>
>
>> >> There is no "maybe" about it, when it comes to the meaning  of words
>>> the majority is ALWAYS right,
>>
>>
>
> > 
>> If you are right, then physicists are wrong on many word, as a i saw in
>> a BBC broadcasting where people were interviewed on many elementary notion
>> in physics, and have shown to have a pregalilean physics.
>
>
> What the hell does that have to do with the price of eggs? Physical ideas
> are objectively true or false, but the definition of words is subjective.
> Words mean whatever the most people say they mean, and the entire point of
> words is communication, so if you have your own private meaning of a word
> known by nobody but you then it is utterly useless.
>
>
> > Then you confuse the greek-indian notion of God,
>
>
> Confuse my ass! This has NOTHING to do with God, this has to do with the
> meaning of words
>  and nothing more
> . Words have no intrinsic meaning, the only meaning word have is the
> meaning people decide to give them. and those meanings always change with
> time. In Shakespeare's day if you were "egregious" then you were
> distinguished,  if you were "nice" then you were silly and if you were
> "silly"  then you were blessed. It would be silly (and I don't mean
> blessed) to say we're right and Shakespeare was wrong, we were both right
> in our day because people have changed they mind about what words mean and
> the majority is ALWAYS right.
>
> > Yet, christians, like muslims and jews have kept alive their platonic
>> roots/tradition, and in that sense,
>> > can be said less wrong than some materialist theory. Why some atheists
>> are so inclined to forget all about a millenium of rational theology is
>> weird,
>
>
>
> This has NOTHING to do with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Plato,
> rationalists, materialists, theology or atheists; this has to do with
> vocabulary and the
> fact
>  that words mean what the majority of people say they mean. And what the
> majority of people say a word means always changes; as of 2017 the English
> word "G-O-D" means a omnipotent omniscient intelligent conscious being who
> created the universe.
> T
> hat point is not even worth of debate, today that's just what people mean
> by that word, except of course for people who for whatever the reason are
> afraid to use the word "atheist" to describe themselves, so for them the
> English word "G-O-D" means a fuzzy grey blob that is non-intelligent and
> non-conscious and not a person, and that's just silly. And I don't mean
> blessed.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-07 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 6:05 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> 
> You missed my explanation on "axiomatics". Hilbert took some times to
> explain it in lay terms. You might remember him telling that his geometry
> would not have its content change in case you change the vocabulary, like
> calling a point "a glass of beer" ...
>

If Hilbert had insisted on equating the concept of a glass of beer with
the English word "point", as you insist on equating the concept of stuff
with the English word "God", then one would be justified in suspecting
Hilbert was trying to hide sloppy thinking with bafflegab.

>> Can you name one short word used in everyday common speech that means
>> something completely different if not downright contradictory when used in
>> a scientific context? I can't.
>
>
> > 
> the word "theory" and "model" are used already in opposite sense by
> logicians and physicists.
>

What are you talking about? Everyday people, logicians and physicists all
agree that "theory" means a set of ideas intended to explain something, and
a "model" of a object is a systematic description and a model of a
phenomenon is a artificial construct that produces that phenomenon or a
approximation of it.

> > 
> Well, I see you have not understand the notion of axiomatics.
>

I understand that if Euclid hadn't bother to explain exactly what the
words "point" and "line" mean his axioms would be meaningless.
Philosophers waste time arguing if man has free will and forget to even ask
what the hell "free will" is supposed to mean. And theologians squabble
among themselves if God exists before they even agree what the word "God"
means. This is just dumb. 

>> 
>> But of course theology is not science, it's not much of anything.
>
>
> > 
> You can approach *any* domain with the scientific method or attitude.
>

Yes but theology has no domain. Theology has no field of study, there is
no there there.

> > 
> To make theology into a non-science, people have used terror and torture,
>

You don't

need 
terror
or
torture
 or anything else to turn theology into a non-science, it got there all on
its own.

 John K Clark

>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-07 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 06 Mar 2017, at 23:45, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 5:10 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

>> Yes it's possible that a majority of those fluent in the  
English language could have decided that the ASCII sequence "God"  
means the unknown ultimate/absolute reality, BUT THEY DID NOT;  
instead they decided that sequence means a intelligent conscious  
omniscient omnipotent PERSON who created the universe.

> The majority are not doing science, simply.

As I've said before, the meaning a ASCII string is not  
determined by science, it is determined by the majority vote of  
those who have a opinion on the subject. Always.

You missed my explanation on "axiomatics". Hilbert took some times to  
explain it in lay terms. You might remember him telling that his  
geometry would not have its content change in case you change the  
vocabulary, like calling a point "a glass of beer" ...

>> In any language the majority is always always always the  
final authority on what a word means.

> Not when we do science.

No ALWAYS! Most people have no opinion on what "2- 
acetoxybenzoic acid" means but those who know enough on the matter  
to vote have decided that the ASCII string means "aspirin".

Those names are descriptive. In mathematics, we use more or less  
descriptive name, but only for pedagogical purpose. It is explicitly  
not part of the theory.

Can you name one short word used in everyday common speech that  
means something completely different if not downright contradictory  
when used in a scientific context? I can't.

the word "theory" and "model" are used already in opposite sense by  
logicians and physicists. Well, I see you have not understand the  
notion of axiomatics.

But of course theology is not science, it's not much of anything.

You can approach *any* domain with the scientific method or attitude.  
To make theology into a non-science, people have used terror and  
torture, and you are not cured of that happening. you side with the  
charlatans of the (political) institituionalisation of the religion.  
You make popes and ayatollas happy.

> Read any book in comparative theology.

Why on Earth would I want to do that??

Because you participate to a thread on theology.

Exactly what is the author of a book on theology a expert on?

Gods, goddesses, god, after-life, pre-life, parallel life, origin of  
souls, consciousness, matter or matter appearances. Originally,  
theology is the "theory of everything". It studies the relations  
between what possibly is, and the many appearances, etc. usually,  
people interested in the fundamentals, and asserting that they do not  
theology, take for granted some notion of reality, like materialism.  
They impose in that way their religion to others, which is not part of  
the scientfic method.

  In the last thousand thousand years  theology has made precisely  
ZERO discoveries.

It made all discoveries, including the discovery that mathematics is a  
science. It discovers physics and, as I have understood only recently,  
also mathematical logic. I gave references on this.

I know that's the correct number because I counted twice and got the  
same figure both times.

> The reasoning does not depend on the choice of words at all.

Of course it does. Even if your reasoning proved that "God" exists  
all you would have really proven is that "stuff" exists. 

You miss the first discovery made by the greeks, and proved in the  
computationalist theory of mind. Nobody can prove anything about  
Reality. We can prove only in the context of a theory, which we can  
only hope that it fits with some reality. That is the insight which  
forces us to be open minded about Reality, as we can not even prove  
that there is one. Now with computationalism, I have explained that,  
altough we cannot prove the existence of the numbers and machines, we  
cannot use anything more to explain the appearances, and it works  
until now.

> Your seem to work for the fundamentalists against any come  
back to reason in the field,

I'm not the one who determines what a word means nor are you, that  
is determined by the collective activity of all English speakers.

Not in the scientific endeavor. You confuse science and mundane  
conversation.

 And I don't know what the "field" is  you're referring to.

Theology, fundamental science, metaphysics, TOEs, ...call it how you  
like. The only obligation is to not change the vocabulary, nor the  
name of the variable, in the course of an explanation or (relative)  
proof.

Bruno

John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-05 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 9:59 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> 
> Like we can agree to use "god" in the sense of the philosopher: the
> (unknown) ultimate/absolute reality.

Yes it's possible that a majority of those fluent in the English language
could have decided that the ASCII sequence "God" means the unknown
ultimate/absolute reality, *BUT THEY DID NOT*; instead they decided that
sequence means a intelligent conscious omniscient omnipotent PERSON who
created the universe. In any language the majority is always always always
the final authority on what a word means. The fact that you absolutely
positively insist on using nonstandard meanings tells me you're more
interested in vocabulary than you are in science or mathematics or
philosophy or even theology.

 John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-05 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 03 Mar 2017, at 19:25, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 4:43 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


> Science is not politics, you can't invoke numbers of  
believers,


But Science is not vocabulary either, and you CAN invoke the  
number of speakers of the English language to determine what a word  
in the English language means, in fact that is the only valid way of  
doing so.


There is a better way, which is the axiomatic method. We abandon the  
idea of trying to see if we talk on the same thing(s), and trying only  
to agree on the main defining (albeit abstractly) what we talk about.  
Mathematicians used this way, but it can be used on any domain of  
inquiry.


I cannot really define what I mean by "natural numbers", but we can  
agree on the main defining relations, like the Robinson or the Peano  
Axioms.


Like we can agree that consciousness, or the belief in some reality,  
is undoubtable, yet in an absolutely non justifiable reason.


Like we can agree to use "god" in the sense of the philosopher: the  
(unknown) ultimate/absolute reality.


The axioms express only the relations on which we agree to focus on  
when we explore some domain(s).


The meanings and interpretations are 100% vocabulary independent if we  
limit ourselves to first-order theories and languages.


Then, the computationalist hypothesis, makes possible to assume not  
much at the start, like any Church-Turing Universal system, and that  
is cheap, you get it already with very elementary arithmetic. All  
those systems determine a "web of dreams", with the dreams  
corresponding to those computations emulating brains, say, and that  
makes computationalism testable, and already confirmed "intuitively"  
by the many-worlds apparent in quantum mechanics, but also formally  
with Theaetetus-Plotinus theory of observable translated in  
arithmetic, which gives a precise quantum logic (to compare with the  
"labyrinth of quantum logics" (van Frassen)  of the physicists).


Bruno



 John K Clark



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-03 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 4:43 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> 
> Science is not politics, you can't invoke numbers of believers,
>

But Science is not vocabulary either, and you *CAN *invoke the number of
speakers of the English language to determine what a word in the English
language means, in fact that is the only valid way of doing so
.

 John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-03 Thread Bruno Marchal

John,

You are not discussing, and as long as you avoid the explanations,  
there will be no progress on this. Study what you criticize before  
please. Science is not politics, you can't invoke numbers of  
believers, nor invoke your favorite "glass of beer".

Bruno

On 02 Mar 2017, at 20:27, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 3:48 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:
>> Arithmetical truth is not a being (superhuman or  
otherwise),

> Not a being?

That is correct the multiplication table is not a being, and this  
must be the only place in the world where such a bland statement is  
considered controversial. 

> > arithmetical truth is not a spirit

> Depends what you mean by spirit

And that depends on what you mean by "mean".

>>You have no evidence that mathematics is more fundamental  
than physics. None,

> I have better: a proof that if we are machine, then physics is a  
modality on the arithmetical truth.

Like hell you have!

>> What is indispensable is that anything that deserves the  
label "God" must be a intelligent conscious omniscient omnipotent  
BEING

> Then all intellectual christians have stopped to believe in  
God after St-Thomas,

If so then a very important question must be asked, how  
many   "intellectual Christians" are on planet Earth today?  
Five? Six?

> who explained that omniscient and omnipotent are contradictory

Obviously it's contradictory, but that doesn't mean there  
are not billions of people who passionately believe it nevertheless.  
I never said Theology was logical or anywhere close to it.

> You can define God by the fundamental reality

That's true,  you can try to get people to change the meaning of a  
word, but doing so would not be a exercise in philosophy or even  
theology, it would just be a exercise in vocabulary. And the only  
reason for doing so would be if you were too cowardly to say "I  
don't believe in God". So now that "God" just means "stuff" you  
can proudly say "I believe in God" even if all you mean is "I  
believe in stuff". It all seems like a pretty stupid word game to me.

John K Clark 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-02 Thread Mark Buda

John Clark  writes:

>>> You have no evidence that mathematics is more fundamental than
>>> physics. None,

I'm his evidence. Unless I misunderstand Bruno's ideas, I am the
machine, ready to be interviewed for the laws of physics (when I don't
have something better to do).

I might not understand your questions: I am not a Chinese room and do
not speak Chinese, although I have a coworker in a neighboring cubicle
who does. Not sure which dialect but I could ask.

You might not understand my answers: words are metaphors for shared
experiences and I have experiences, namely certain quales which shall
remain nameless, which to my knowledge have never been experiences by
any other being. However, since introspection of some of these have
resulted in my ability to explain things I previously found myself
unable to explain, I have hope that some of them I will be able to
communicate. No telling which ones, though. It would be like explaining
red to Mary the color scientist while she's still in her room. Which may
or may not speak Chinese - only Mary might know, until Wigner opens it.

> > I have better: a proof that if we are machine, then physics is a
> modality on the arithmetical truth.
>
> Like hell you have!

I'll wager some of my otherwise free time that I'm his proof.

> What is indispensable is that anything that deserves the label
> "God" must be a intelligent conscious omniscient omnipotent BEING

I used to call myself a theological noncognivitist, but I'm rethinking
that. I sometimes like to say that "God" is the thing which no two
people can agree on a definition of. However, in light of the
aforementioned incommitoday I decided I should revise that to be that
"God" is the thing which no two people can agree on the definition of
*yet*, as some recent trains of thought which recalled certain
experiences under the influence of a (legal) entheogenic compound have
suggested might be wise.

Nevertheless, by some definitions of "God" I might deserve that label
(and there are an infinite number, many unused). God groks, after all, I
am demonstrably intelligent and you will have to take my word for it at
the moment that I am conscious - however, in my view, since the Turing
test is as valid a test for consciousness as it is for intelligence, if
we continue to keep in touch you will be able to administer that test
yourself. Since, because of the Blockhead argument, the only truly valid
Turing test for consciousness is an infinite-duration one, that will
take quite some time. And if my path through observer-moments takes me
through them all (think the end of John P. Dworetsky's "The Illusion of
Death" but throw in the ideas of a strange loop and synesthesia and some
ideas I hope to get to expounding in the near future) I (and you) will
eventually be categorizable as omniscient and omnipotent in the sense of
having known everything knowable and done everything doable at one time
or another.

> You can define God by the fundamental reality 
> 
>
> That's true, you can try to get people to change the meaning of a
> word, but doing so would not be a exercise in philosophy or even
> theology, it would just be a exercise in vocabulary.

Do, or do not. There is no try.

> And the only reason for doing so would be if you were too cowardly to
> say "I don't believe in God".

No, I have an excellent reason for doing so, in fact I can name two off
the top of my head. One, I'd like to coopt catchy and memorable but
little-used words to name some of the aforementioned quales with no
name. Two, while word salad can be delicious and nutritious, ambiguity
can be a barrier to communication.

Also, meaning exists only in minds, so words, such as "inconceivable",
don't always mean what you think they mean, no matter how much you keep
using them.

> So now that "God" just means "stuff" you can 
> proudly say "I believe in God" even if all you mean is "I believe in
> stuff". It all seems like a pretty stupid word game to me.

We are all educated stupid word animals.
-- 
Mark Buda 
I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-02 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 3:48 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> 
> >>
> A
> rithmetical truth
>  is not a being (superhuman or otherwise),
>
> > 
> Not a being?
>

That is correct the multiplication table is not a being, and this must be
the only place in the world where such a bland statement is considered
controversial. 

> > > 
> arithmetical truth
> 
> is not a spirit
>
> > 
> Depends what you mean by spirit
>

And that depends on what you mean by "mean".

>>
>> You have no evidence that mathematics is more fundamental than physics.
>> None,
>> 
>>
>
>
> I have better: a proof that if we are machine, then physics is a
> modality on the arithmetical truth.
>

Like hell you have!

>> 
> What is indispensable is that anything that deserves the label "God" must
> be a intelligent conscious omniscient omnipotent *BEING*
>

> 
> Then all intellectual christians have stopped to believe in God after
> St-Thomas,
>

If so then a very important question must be asked, how many 

 "intellectual Christians" are on planet Earth today? Five? Six?

> 
> who explained that omniscient and omnipotent are contradictory
>

Obviously it's contradictory, 
but that doesn't mean there are not billions of people who passionately
believe it nevertheless. I never said Theology was logical or anywhere
close to it.

> 
> You can define God by the fundamental reality
>

That's true,  you can try to get people to change the meaning of a word,
but doing so would not be a exercise in philosophy or even theology, it
would just be a exercise in vocabulary. And the only reason for doing so
would be if you were too cowardly to say "I don't believe in God". So now
that "God" just means "stuff" you can 
proudly say "I believe in God" even if all you mean is "I believe in
stuff". It all seems like a pretty stupid word game to me.

John K Clark 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-03-02 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 28 Feb 2017, at 23:59, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 12:07 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrot

> 1  (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator  
and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the  
supreme being.
 2  (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit  
worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity : a  
moon god | an incarnation of the god Vishnu.

 • an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine

But maybe you don't like Google, let's see how the Merriam-Webster  
dictionary defines the English word "God":

1:   the supreme or ultimate reality:  the Being perfect in power,  
wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the  
universe :  the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as  
eternal Spirit :  infinite Mind

> Very good definition.

I agree.

> Then with the computationalist hypothesis, this role is well  
played by the notion of "arithmetical truth",

No it is not. Arithmetical truth is not a being (superhuman or  
otherwise),

Not a being?

arithmetical truth is not wise, 

How do you know that?

arithmetical truth
is not the source of all moral authority,

That is not part of the Merriam-Webster definition, and, anyway, how  
could you know this? If you are a digitalizable correct machine, you  
don't know what Arithmetical truth is capable of. You cannot define it  
without postulating something bigger.

arithmetical truth
is not good (or bad),

Maybe. Maybe not. You seem to have superpower and superknowledge.

arithmetical truth is not a spirit,

Depends what you mean by spirit. It is certainly not a material thing.

and above all arithmetical truth is not a mind.

It is close to modus ponens though. So it is a theory, even if not a  
computable theory. So it is not a computable mind, but not a mind? How  
could you know that.

Oh and anyone who thinks arithmetical truth is deserving of  
worship is just a bit nuts.

I'm personally OK with this. I think all god hates worshipping,  
although I can't be sure.

But again, that is not part of the Merriam-Webster definition you gave.

> All notions can be made mathematically precise in term of set  
of numbers.

By "notions" I presume you mean physical notions,

No, I mean *all* notions. Like God/Truth, provabaility,  
knowledgeability, observability, etc.

because otherwise all you'd be saying in the above is numbers need  
numbers.

Some set of numbers (like provability) can described by one number  
(and thus by an infinity of numbers too).

Some set of numbers cannot (like God/Truth, knowledgeability, etc.)

And it works both ways, numbers can be made physically precise in  
terms of physics; for example the meaning of the number 2 can be  
made precise by illustrating it with the rock hear and that other  
rock over there. You have no evidence that mathematics is more  
fundamental than physics. None,

I have better: a proof that if we are machine, then physics is a  
modality on the arithmetical truth. It is the sigma_1 part of the  
arithmetical truth seen from a first person point of view, and that  
has been proved, and even verified until now. The empiric physics does  
verify the laws of the machine/numbers physics.

> God is the thing by which all other things proceed.

That may be a necessary attribute for God to have but it  
is not sufficient.

The ultimate reality ... from the points of view of numbers/machine.

What is indispensable is that anything that deserves the label  
"God" must be a intelligent conscious omniscient omnipotent BEING

Then all intellectual christians have stopped to believe in God after  
St-Thomas, who explained that omniscient and omnipotent are  
contradictory when taken together.
And the notion of "being" is a very complex one. In the sense of the  
neoplatonist theologian, God is NOT a being, for reason similar to the  
fact that "all numbers" is not a number, or that in Cantor set theory  
(or in VBG, or ZF set theories) the collection of all sets is not a  
set. God is responsible for all beings, but not for itself.

who created the universe; and I'm sorry to say the  
multiplication table, useful as it is, just doesn't fit the bill.

The theorem is that if computationalism is correct, addition 
+multiplication does fit the bill. It has too, and it works indeed.

> I don't remember any people in this list defining God has a  
blob,

Hmm, I'm pretty sure somebody on the list did, I 'll see if I can  
find a example of somebody equating God with a vague amorphous non- 
specific non-person.

  > God is the Reality we hope exists.

Wow, that didn't take long!

Yes, the ultimate reality, when we are aware that it might not be the  
physical reality. You can define God by the fundamental reality for  
people who lost the faith in

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-28 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 12:07 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrot


>>
>>
>> *> 1  (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and
>> ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme
>> being. 2  (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit
>> worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity : a moon
>> god | an incarnation of the god Vishnu. • an image, idol, animal, or other
>> object worshiped as divine*
>
>
>
> *But maybe you don't like Google, let's see how the Merriam-Webster
>> dictionary defines the English word "God": *
>
>
>> * 1:   the supreme or ultimate reality:  the Being perfect in power,
>> wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe
>> :  the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit :
>>  infinite Mind*
>
>
> > 
> Very good definition.
>

I agree.


> 
> Then with the computationalist hypothesis, this role is well played by the
> notion of "arithmetical truth",
>

No it is not. A
rithmetical truth
 is not a being (superhuman or otherwise),
arithmetical truth
 is not
wise,

arithmetical truth

is not the 
source of all moral authority
,
arithmetical truth

is
not good (or bad), arithmetical truth

is not a spirit, and above all arithmetical truth

is not a mind
. Oh and anyone who thinks 
arithmetical truth
 is deserving of worship is just a bit nuts.

> 
> All notions can be made mathematically precise in term of set of numbers.
>

By "notions" I presume you mean physical notions, because otherwise all
you'd be saying in the above is numbers need numbers. And it works both
ways, numbers can be made physically precise in terms of physics; for
example the meaning of the number 2 can be made precise by illustrating it
with the rock hear and that other rock over there. You have no evidence
that mathematics is more fundamental than physics. None,

> 
> God is the thing by which all other things proceed.
>

That may be a necessary 
attribute for God to have but it is not sufficient. What is indispensable
is that anything that deserves the label "God" must be a intelligent
conscious omniscient omnipotent *BEING *who created the universe
;
and I'm sorry to say the multiplication table, useful as it is, just
doesn't fit the bill.


> > 
> I don't remember any people in this list defining God has a blob,
>

Hmm, I'm pretty sure somebody on the list did, I 'll see if I can find a
example of somebody equating God with a vague amorphous non-specific
non-person.


>
> > 
> God is the Reality we hope exists.
>

Wow, that didn't take long!


  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 28 Feb 2017, at 00:50, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 3:41 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

> You describe the word when used in everyday life natural  
language. Once we write scientific paper,

You are not writing a scientific paper when you're posting to this  
list. 

> we use more technical definition.

There is no technical definition of the word "God", and the  
natural language one certainly isn't a amorphous gray blob that  
can't think isn't a person and doesn't do anything.

>> This has NOTHING to do with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Plato,  
rationalists, materialists, theology or atheists; this has to do  
with vocabulary and the fact that words mean what the majority  
of people say they mean. And what the majority of people say a word  
means always changes; as of 2017 the English word "G-O-D" means a  
omnipotent omniscient intelligent conscious being who created the  
universe. 

> Not at all. Not for the expert in the field, even when christian.  
Just open a book on theology, even a modern one, or look at a  
dictionary. You confuse a concept, and a particular theory.

Confuse my ass! let's see how Google defines the English word "God":

1  (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator  
and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the  
supreme being.
2  (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit  
worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity : a  
moon god | an incarnation of the god Vishnu.

• an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine

But maybe you don't like Google, let's see how the Merriam-Webster  
dictionary defines the English word "God":

1:   the supreme or ultimate reality:  the Being perfect in power,  
wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the  
universe :  the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as  
eternal Spirit :  infinite Mind

Very good definition.

Then with the computationalist hypothesis, this role is well played by  
the notion of "arithmetical truth", and even "sigma_1 arithmetical  
truth" (i. the universal dovetailing) although this is not supposed to  
be justified by the creature (the identity belongs to G* minus G,  
somehow).

Indeed, the arithmetical truth defines and realizes all computations,  
and things like "physical universe", and many other god-like notion,  
are realized by the transfinitely many non computable relations, which  
can, or not, play the role of Oracle (in Turing sense).

All notions can be made mathematically precise in term of set of  
numbers. The machine can be identified by their sigma_1 set of  
beliefs, and the gods/oracles by more complex sets of propositions (or  
of their Gödel numbers).

2 :  a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes  
and powers and to require human worship; specifically :  one  
controlling a particular aspect or part of reality

Unfortunately for your argument I can't find anybody who defines the  
English word "God" as a blob that is nothing and can do nothing,

Of course!

God is the thing by which all other things proceed. I don't remember  
any people in this list defining God has a blob, still less a nothing  
doing nothing. God is the Reality we hope exists. It is hardly nothing  
for any consistent or sound machine, and certainly not a blob.

Bruno

and I can't find anyone who uses that meaning except for those who  
are too cowardly to say in a loud clear voice "I don't believe in  
God".

> I don't see the point of forgetting a millenium of honest inquiry  
in the field of theology,

And what has that honest millennium long inquiry in the field of  
theology discovered? After a thousand years it has produced exactly  
nothing, zero, zilch, goose egg.

> to use a definition known as the one which has kill the science to  
make it into a tool to prevent, and persecute the free research.

I don't know what that means.

> The result is that you are accomplice with those who keep theology  
out of science

Thank you, that's one on the nicest things anybody ever said to me.  
And by "nice" I don't mean "silly", although Shakespeare would have  
thought I did. But language and the meaning of words always changes.

> In the machine theology

I don't know what that means.

> like in the platonician theology, the question of seeing God as a  
person is an open, and well debated, problem.

No it is not. If you can really see God then God exists, if God  
exists then you are looking at a intelligent conscious person and  
the one who created the universe. That is not deep, it is not  
philosophy or even theology, it's just a tautology. The only  
question worth asking is "did a intelligent conscious person really  
create the universe?".  I say no but I'll debate that if you wish,  
but debating if "God" is a intelligent conscious person who created  
the universe is just silly. And I don't mean

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-27 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 3:41 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> 
> You describe the word when used in everyday life natural language. Once we
> write scientific paper,
>

You are not writing a scientific paper when you're posting to this list. 

> > 
> we use more technical definition.
>

There is no technical definition of the word "God", and the natural
language one certainly isn't a amorphous gray blob that can't think isn't a
person and doesn't do anything.

>> This has NOTHING to do with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Plato,
>> rationalists, materialists, theology or atheists; this has to do with
>> vocabulary and the
>> fact
>>  that words mean what the majority of people say they mean. And what the
>> majority of people say a word means always changes; as of 2017 the English
>> word "G-O-D" means a omnipotent omniscient intelligent conscious being who
>> created the universe.
>> 
>>
>
> > Not at all. Not for the expert in the field, even when christian. Just
> open a book on theology, even a modern one, or look at a dictionary. You
> confuse a concept, and a particular theory.
>

Confuse my ass! let's see how Google defines the English word "God":

*1  (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and
ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme
being.2  (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit
worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity : a moon
god | an incarnation of the god Vishnu.• an image, idol, animal, or other
object worshiped as divine *

But maybe you don't like Google, let's see how the Merriam-Webster
dictionary defines the English word "God":

*1:   the supreme or ultimate reality:  the Being perfect in power, wisdom,
and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe :  the
incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit :  infinite
Mind2 :  a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes
and powers and to require human worship; specifically :  one controlling a
particular aspect or part of reality *

Unfortunately for your argument I can't find anybody who defines the
English word "God" as a blob that is nothing and can do nothing, and I
can't find anyone who uses that meaning except for those who are too
cowardly to say in a loud clear voice "I don't believe in God".

> I don't see the point of forgetting a millenium of honest inquiry in the
> field of theology,
>

And what has that honest millennium long inquiry in the field of theology
discovered? After a thousand years it has produced exactly nothing, zero,
zilch, goose egg.

> to use a definition known as the one which has kill the science to make
> it into a tool to prevent, and persecute the free research.
>

I don't know what that means.

> > The result is that you are accomplice with those who keep theology out
> of science
>

Thank you, that's one on the nicest things anybody ever said to me. And by
"nice" I don't mean "silly", although Shakespeare would have thought I did.
But language and the meaning of words always changes.

> In the machine theology

I don't know what that means.

> like in the platonician theology, the question of seeing God as a person
> is an open, and well debated, problem.

No it is not. If you can really see God then God exists, if God exists then
you are looking at a intelligent conscious person and the one who created
the universe. That is not deep, it is not philosophy or even theology, it's
just a tautology. The only question worth asking is "did a intelligent
conscious person really create the universe?".  I say no but I'll debate
that if you wish, but debating if "God" is a intelligent conscious person
who created the universe is just silly. And I don't mean "blessed.

> Again, you confuse the concept of God with some particular theory.

Confuse my ass! I'm the only one talking about the concept of God, you're
talking about the English word "God". A logician should know about the
use-mention distinction.

Use: cheese is derived from milk.

Mention: cheese is derived from the Old English word ċēse.

I am using God, you are just mentioning God.

  John K Clark

>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-27 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 27 Feb 2017, at 01:43, John Clark wrote:

Bruno Marchal via googlegroups.com wrote:

>> There is no "maybe" about it, when it comes to the meaning  of  
words the majority is ALWAYS right,

> If you are right, then physicists are wrong on many  
word, as a i saw in a BBC broadcasting where people were interviewed  
on many elementary notion in physics, and have shown to have a  
pregalilean physics.

What the hell does that have to do with the price of eggs?  
Physical ideas are objectively true or false, but the definition of  
words is subjective. Words mean whatever the most people say they  
mean, and the entire point of words is communication, so if you have  
your own private meaning of a word known by nobody but you then it  
is utterly useless.

You describe the word when used in everyday life natural language.  
Once we write scientific paper, we use more technical definition.

> Then you confuse the greek-indian notion of God,

Confuse my ass! This has NOTHING to do with God, this has to do with  
the meaning of words and nothing more. Words have no intrinsic  
meaning,

So you should not have a problem with some technical enlargement of  
their meaning.

the only meaning word have is the meaning people decide to give them.

You make my point.

and those meanings always change with time. In Shakespeare's day if  
you were "egregious" then you were distinguished,  if you were  
"nice" then you were silly and if you were "silly"  then you were  
blessed. It would be silly (and I don't mean blessed) to say we're  
right and Shakespeare was wrong, we were both right in our day  
because people have changed they mind about what words mean and the  
majority is ALWAYS right.

> Yet, christians, like muslims and jews have kept alive their  
platonic roots/tradition, and in that sense,
> can be said less wrong than some materialist theory. Why some  
atheists are so inclined to forget all about a millenium of rational  
theology is weird,

This has NOTHING to do with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Plato,  
rationalists, materialists, theology or atheists; this has to do  
with vocabulary and the fact that words mean what the majority  
of people say they mean. And what the majority of people say a word  
means always changes; as of 2017 the English word "G-O-D" means a  
omnipotent omniscient intelligent conscious being who created the  
universe. 

Not at all. Not for the expert in the field, even when christian. Just  
open a book on theology, even a modern one, or look at a dictionary.  
You confuse a concept, and a particular theory.
I don't see the point of forgetting a millenium of honest inquiry in  
the field of theology, to use a definition known as the one which has  
kill the science to make it into a tool to prevent, and persecute the  
free research.
The result is that you are accomplice with those who keep theology out  
of science so that they can use authoritative argument.

That point is not even worth of debate, today that's just what  
people mean by that word, except of course for people who for  
whatever the reason are afraid to use the word "atheist" to describe  
themselves,

I use "atheist" to describe myself when I am in a group which  
genuinely accept agnostic atheism, but personal opinion are of no use  
in science. In other groups I don't use it, as they use it with the  
meaning of "belief that there is 0 god", which has as much meaning  
that they are conception of God.

so for them the English word "G-O-D" means a fuzzy grey blob that is  
non-intelligent and non-conscious and not a person, and that's just  
silly. And I don't mean blessed.

In the machine theology, like in the platonician theology, the  
question of seeing God as a person is an open, and well debated,  
problem. Again, you confuse the concept of God with some particular  
theory.

Bruno

 John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-26 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 26 Feb 2017, at 03:18, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

>> The difference is that the billions of theists on the round  
thing

 we walk on still use "God" to be the Abrahamic superbeing.

> Really? Interesting. Maybe they are right or close to right.

There is no "maybe" about it, when it comes to the meaning
of words the majority is ALWAYS right, a word know only to
you would be utterly useless. If most people decide that the
word "circle" means a 3 sided polygon of 180 degrees then
geometers are just going to have to change their vocabulary.
Language always changes, that's why its hard to understand
Shakespeare's plays, and even harder to understand
Beowulf.

 John K Clark

I can cut your comment, nor write it except here.

If you are right, then physicists are wrong on many word, as a i saw  
in a BBC broadcasting where people were interviewed on many elementary  
notion in physics, and have shown to have a pregalilean physics.

Then you confuse the greek-indian notion of God, the concept, and the  
"precise", but fairy-tale like particular *theory*, which might be  
verified, when the terms are used in large sense, and is usually  
considered as refuted when taken in literal fairy tale sense.

Yet, christians, like muslims and jews have kept alive their platonic  
roots/tradition, and in that sense, can be said less wrong than some  
materialist theory. It is not easy, a soufi meeting has been recently  
victim of an EI bombing (70 victims).

Why some atheists are so inclined to forget all about a millenium of  
rational theology is weird, given that this rational theology has been  
the first victim of the institutionalisation of the religion, and they  
have been banished from our academies by the use of violence and  
terror due to the stealing of the religious by the politics. You  
seems, with all respect, to look, quoting Einstein on the atheists,  
like the slave(s) who are still feeling the weight of your (their)  
chain which you (they) have thrown off after hard struggle.

Bruno

On 23 Feb 2017, at 21:45, Brent Meeker wrote:

On 2/23/2017 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 Feb 2017, at 01:08, Brent Meeker wrote:

On 2/21/2017 11:03 AM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent:
do you think we are that sure how to identify intelligence and  
consciousness?

Intelligence   (inter-lego)
   I identify from the linguistic origin (Latin) as READING  
BETWEEN THE (properly) EXPRESSED FEATURES - to detect additional  
sense (maybe hidden so far).

Are you going to Bruno on me and adopt some meaning that a  
thousand years out of date.

I can't let you say this Brent. I use always the most common terms  
used by everybody, except the dogmatic minority. I have hundreds  
of book on theology, written mostly by christians and muslims, on  
neoplatonism, and they all use the term "theology" and "god" in  
the greek sense. They don't even mention that they use the greek  
sense as it is compeletely natural in a non-dogmatic context. The  
restricted sense is the popular, non scientific sense used by  
believers in special tradition.

It is rather incredible, but constant, that the strong-atheists  
insist so much on the dogmatic (and pseudo-religious) definitions.  
In science, all theories rename all the terms. We change the  
theories, not the terms, which would lead to confusion and would  
hide the progress. You could as well say that Earth does not  
exist, because it has meant  for many centuries: a flat  
thing on which we walk.

The difference is that the billions of theists on the round thing  
we walk on still use "God" to be the Abrahamic superbeing.

Really? Interesting. Maybe they are right or close to right.

Obviously, as scientist, we have to do the math, in our favorite  
theory to see if that matches, and of course, I have already point  
to some discrepancies with the "God" of the universal machine, much  
close to proclus theology (sic) or Plotinus, Moderatus of Gades.

Nevertheless, note that each main branches of the Abrahamic belief  
has kept some sub-branches which basically match that theology (of  
the universal classical machine).

In theology, only the con men could pretend that science has decided  
between Plato/Parmenides/Pythagoras and Aristotle. Mocking theology  
or philosophy of mind makes people confusing physics and metaphysics/ 
theology.

Better not lost the spirit of rigor in all domain. The assumption of  
a primary physical universe is cool, but might need to be tested  
with the (immaterialist) "theology" of the universal number (G, G*  
and the other "hypostases").

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-26 Thread Bruno Marchal


Hi Telmo!


On 25 Feb 2017, at 16:32, Telmo Menezes wrote:


Hi Bruno!

Evolution is a theory on the origins of biological complexity. We  
know

nothing about consciousness.




Do you agree that consciousness is a form of knowledge? That is:
consciousness requires some knowledge, and (genuine) knowledge  
requires some

conscious person)?


I agree, but I feel it begs the question: knowledge is an awareness of
something, it implies consciousness by definition.



it does not beg the question no more than the first order definition  
of the natural numbers beg the question, in the sense that you agree  
(or not) with the modal axioms for knowledgeable:


[]p -> p
[](p -> q) -> ([]p -> []q)

adding

[]p -> [][]p (for those having rich introspective knowledge)

Then, we can ask ourself what, in machine terms, or in machine+reality  
terms, would obey that theory. In this case, as you know, the  
Theaetetus idea works on Gödel's beweisbar predicate: the true  
opinion, or beweisbar and true [1]p = []p & p (makes [1] obeying the  
S4 logic above).


By Tarski, we cannot define "true" in the language of the machine, but  
we can model the knowledge by defining it on each (sigma_1  
arithmetical) p by beweisbar('p') & p. That provides a different  
logic, thanks to incompleteness, and indeed the arithmetically  
complete one (à-la Solovay) is axiomatized by an extension of S4: S4+  
Grz  (the formula []([](p->[]p) -> p) -> p from Grzegorczyk, a polish  
logician). (+ p -> []p to model the sigma_1 leaves of the universal  
dovetailer).


What is really nice here, is that the machine cannot name its first  
person self, and its metalogic reminds both Brouwer creative subject,  
but also the "inner god" of many eastern and western mystics. The soul  
of a machine is NOT a machine, nor anything third person describable,  
and It knows it.


Now, I could argue that consciousness per se is better modeled by  
[1]<1>p, but that is for the details (after all we do have distinct  
word for consciousness and knowledge, and a priori, consciousness  
might be delusional, where apparently, with the Theaetetic definition,  
it cannot be).





What is the situation with an artificial neural network?


Well, it will be harder for us to see its coded self, but it is Turing  
universal, and so can have one built by nature emulating Kleene's  
second recursion theorem through the neural net. The DNA strands did  
something like this already before (arguably).






Does it know
something, or is it akin to a stone being kicked down a hill?


The neural net knows nothing, but if the neural net embodies the right  
"codes" it might support a inner soul ([]p & p), like apparently our  
brains (which supports many souls which integrated well into the 1-I  
(hopefully, when sober).


I think that the left brain might be specialized in the 3p  
"analytical" believer []p (& <>t), and the right brain might be  
specialize with the intuitive, non definable "[]p & p (& <>t)".






Or is
the stone being kicked down a hill akin to our brains and requiring
consciousness already?


All relatively instanciated consciousness requires the universal  
consciousness of the non Löbian machine, I think, and get reflexive  
when Löbian, and inherit the Löbian theology, including its physics,  
making it testable (and its quantum logic seems to fit until now).







Then do you agree with the S4 theory of rational knowledge, which  
is that


(knowable x) implies x
(knowable (x implies y)) implies ((knowable x) implies (knowable y))
(knowable x) implies (knowable (knowable x))

With the inference rules:

If I prove x I can deduce (knowable x)
+ modus ponens


I'm ok with this.



OK.





If you are OK with this, it is not difficult to explain why  
evolution, or

anything actually, cannot NOT bring consciousness, and a first person
knower, in the picture.


Here I don't follow. Aren't you making the hidden assumption:

(knowable x) => (known x) ?



Only (knowable x) => (know x) on some leaves of the universal  
dovetailer.


Keep in mind that I live and work in Plato heaven, or Cantor paradise.  
I don't mind to wait any finite number of seconds. And the gal here is  
to figure out what is real, and what is "persistent illusion(s)", like  
Einstein qualified time.







Notice that I do tend to think what you say, that "anything actually,
cannot NOT bring consciousness" -- but I see this as part of my
"personal religion". I'm just not convinced that the above proves it.



It does not prove it, but follows from the mechanist assumption. Of  
course the theology of the (Löbian) machine does not need the  
mechanist assumption, except when we do the sigma_1 restriction, and  
get G1 and G1* and its intensional variants.







That is a consequence of incompleteness which make the machine  
aware of the
difference between []p and []p & p. The machine can know that []p  
obeys to

the modal logic G and that ([]p & p), the definition of "knowable"

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-25 Thread spudboy100 via Everything List


This just my opinion, this, not being by necessity a permanent conclusion on my 
part, however, it seems to me that the conscious that we experience is 
basically, why the old philosophers called, material. Modern brain scientists 
would conclude in the type of brain cells, maybe Spindle Cells, their 
integration,and so forth that causes consciousness. There may be many other 
ways of developing or propagating consciousness. Simply, that it seems to me, 
that as it is currently known, its a biological thing. Yes, I am thinking it is 
not exclusively, bio, or what call, "carbon + water." I believe, unless there 
is a physical reason not to, that first "Weak AI," will be built, then, "Strong 
AI," which is like Marvin Minsky's 'guy in a box,' that we see interacting with 
people in all the sci fi stuff we see and read. Like Tony Stark's Jarvis, like 
HAL 9000 in 2001, aka as Minsky's 'guy in a box.' 


I am prejudiced in favor of much of the science fiction by astronomer, Alastair 
Reynolds, who does most of his stories limited by the absolute framework of 
relativity, and the sciences we know today.  So, without a reason to 
disbelieve, I am guessing that we will make AI of several flavors soon, and our 
great, great, great, great, grand kiddies will opt for a kind of mergence with 
these AI/machinery, for obvious reasons. One reason, would be that, as far as 
we know, it beats the heck out of dying early, especially if you like the idea 
of enlivening an apparently, dead milky way that is about us. I could be 
terribly, hugely wrong, spiritually, or psychologically, or cosmologically, 
but, its how I am rolling tonight. 


-Original Message-
From: Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Feb 25, 2017 8:20 pm
Subject: Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam





On 2/25/2017 11:06 AM, Telmo Menezes  wrote:


  


  
On Sat, 25 Feb 2017 at 18:17, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com>
wrote:
  
  

  
On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at10:32 AM, Telmo Menezes 
<te...@telmomenezes.com>wrote:




>  
I always have a hard time seeing consciousness as   
 causal.



  


  

  
Why, where is the  mystery? If external information didn't 
CAUSE your  consciousness to change you might as well be 
blind  and deaf, and if consciousness didn't CAUSE 
 external things to change you might as well be 
 paralyzed from the neck down . 
   
  

  
  

  
  
I meant and in the second sense. Take an artificialneural network 
driving a car. Like me, you suspect it mightbe conscious -- but we 
know the full mechanism. We know it'sa bunch of thresholds 
connected in a complex way, 

  


Of course if it's a big, deep neural network, even on simulated onvon 
Neumann architecture, that has been trained on a large range ofinstances 
(as it must be) we probably don't know how it's connectedand weighted and 
it would FAPP impossible to explain why it doeswhat it does in terms of its 
experience; and FAPP it would beimpossible to predict what it will do 
except by running it.  So itwill have "free" will. :-)

Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, 
they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct 
which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes 
observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is 
solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
--—John von Neumann


  

  
running on von neumann machine and so on. How isconsciousness 
causing behavior ?
  

  
  

  


  

  
  John K Clark 
  


  



  


  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the 
   Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails
from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-25 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
>> >
>> The difference is that the billions of theists on the round thing
>
>  we walk on still use "God" to be the Abrahamic superbeing.
>
>

> 
> Really? Interesting. Maybe they are right or close to right.


T
here is no "maybe" about it, when it comes to the meaning
of words

the majority is
*ALWAYS *right, a word know only to
you would be utterly useless.

If most people decide that the
word "circle" means a 3 sided polygon of 180 degrees
then
geometers are just going to have to change their

vocabulary.
Language always changes, that's why its hard to understand
Shakespeare's plays, and even harder to understand
Beowulf
.


 John K Clark






> On 23 Feb 2017, at 21:45, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/23/2017 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 22 Feb 2017, at 01:08, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/21/2017 11:03 AM, John Mikes wrote:
>
> Brent:
> do you think we are that sure how to identify *intelligence and
> consciousness? *
>
> *Intelligence   (inter-lego)*
> *   I identify from the linguistic origin (Latin) as READING BETWEEN THE
> (properly) EXPRESSED FEATURES - *to detect additional sense (maybe hidden
> so far).
>
>
> Are you going to Bruno on me and adopt some meaning that a thousand years
> out of date.
>
>
> I can't let you say this Brent. I use always the most common terms used by
> everybody, except the dogmatic minority. I have hundreds of book on
> theology, written mostly by christians and muslims, on neoplatonism, and
> they all use the term "theology" and "god" in the greek sense. They don't
> even mention that they use the greek sense as it is compeletely natural in
> a non-dogmatic context. The restricted sense is the popular, non scientific
> sense used by believers in special tradition.
>
> It is rather incredible, but constant, that the strong-atheists insist so
> much on the dogmatic (and pseudo-religious) definitions. In science, all
> theories rename all the terms. We change the theories, not the terms, which
> would lead to confusion and would hide the progress. You could as well say
> that Earth does not exist, because it has meant for many centuries: a flat
> thing on which we walk.
>
>
> The difference is that the billions of theists on the round thing we walk
> on* still *use "God" to be the Abrahamic superbeing.
>
>
> Really? Interesting. Maybe they are right or close to right.
>
> Obviously, as scientist, we have to do the math, in our favorite theory to
> see if that matches, and of course, I have already point to some
> discrepancies with the "God" of the universal machine, much close to
> proclus theology (sic) or Plotinus, Moderatus of Gades.
>
> Nevertheless, note that each main branches of the Abrahamic belief has
> kept some sub-branches which basically match that theology (of the
> universal classical machine).
>
> In theology, only the con men could pretend that science has decided
> between Plato/Parmenides/Pythagoras and Aristotle. Mocking theology or
> philosophy of mind makes people confusing physics and metaphysics/theology.
>
> Better not lost the spirit of rigor in all domain. The assumption of a
> primary physical universe is cool, but might need to be tested with the
> (immaterialist) "theology" of the universal number (G, G* and the other
> "hypostases").
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-25 Thread Brent Meeker

On 2/25/2017 11:06 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sat, 25 Feb 2017 at 18:17, John Clark > wrote:

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:

> 
I always have a hard time seeing consciousness as causal.

Why, where is the mystery? If external information didn't CAUSE
your consciousness to change you might as well be blind and deaf,
and if consciousness didn't CAUSE external things to change you
might as well be paralyzed from the neck down .

I meant and in the second sense. Take an artificial neural network 
driving a car. Like me, you suspect it might be conscious -- but we 
know the full mechanism. We know it's a bunch of thresholds connected 
in a complex way,

Of course if it's a big, deep neural network, even on simulated on von 
Neumann architecture, that has been trained on a large range of 
instances (as it must be) we probably don't know how it's connected and 
weighted and it would FAPP impossible to explain why it does what it 
does in terms of its experience; and FAPP it would be impossible to 
predict what it will do except by running it.  So it will have "free" 
will. :-)

Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, 
they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct 
which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes 
observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct 
is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

--—John von Neumann

running on von neumann machine and so on. How is consciousness causing 
behavior ?

  John K Clark 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google

Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
.
To post to this group, send email to
everything-list@googlegroups.com
.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-25 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> >> 
>> Why, where is the mystery? If external information didn't CAUSE your
>> consciousness to change you might as well be blind and deaf, and if
>> consciousness didn't CAUSE external things to change you might as well be
>> paralyzed from the neck down .
>>
>>
>
> > 
> I meant and in the second sense.
>

I meant physical actions changing consciousness, what is the second
meaning? 

> > 
> Take an artificial neural network driving a car. Like me, you suspect it
> might be conscious
>

Well... I suspect
a artificial neural network driving a car
 is as
conscious as a typical human is who is driving over the same road he has
done a thousand times before, and that's not much. Can you remember one
specific event you were conscious of when you drove to work last Thursday?

> > 
>  but we know the full mechanism. We know it's a bunch of thresholds
> connected in a complex way, running on von neumann machine and so on. How
> is consciousness causing behavior ?
>

The problem is not unique to consciousness, how does anything "cause"
anything? When we say A causes Z we mean that whenever A happens Z happens.
But you could say that is mysterious because A is not Z, and indeed when we
look closer we discover that actually A causes B and then B causes Z, but B
is not Z either, and when we look even closer we find that B cause C and C
causes Z.  And so it goes. Either this chain of causality goes on forever,
in which case A doesn't cause Z at all and yet we know it does, or
eventually we come to a brute fact, Y causes Z and there is no "why" from
there.

But as I said this difficulty has nothing specifically to do with
consciousness, it's just in the nature of causality. If you are conscious
and if you are the product of random mutation and natural selection as
Darwin said them "intelligence causes consciousness" is a brute fact, but
eventually you'll always encounter a brute fact if you look at causal
chains close enough, not just ones involving consciousness.

John K Clark  

>
>
>>   John K Clark 
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-25 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sat, 25 Feb 2017 at 18:17, John Clark  wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
> > 
> I always have a hard time seeing consciousness as causal.
>
>
> Why, where is the mystery? If external information didn't CAUSE your
> consciousness to change you might as well be blind and deaf, and if
> consciousness didn't CAUSE external things to change you might as well be
> paralyzed from the neck down .
>
>

I meant and in the second sense. Take an artificial neural network driving
a car. Like me, you suspect it might be conscious -- but we know the full
mechanism. We know it's a bunch of thresholds connected in a complex way,
running on von neumann machine and so on. How is consciousness causing
behavior ?


>   John K Clark 
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-25 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

> 
> I always have a hard time seeing consciousness as causal.

Why, where is the mystery? If external information didn't CAUSE your
consciousness to change you might as well be blind and deaf, and if
consciousness didn't CAUSE external things to change you might as well be
paralyzed from the neck down .

  John K Clark 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-25 Thread Telmo Menezes

Hi Bruno!

>> Evolution is a theory on the origins of biological complexity. We know
>> nothing about consciousness.
>
>
>
> Do you agree that consciousness is a form of knowledge? That is:
> consciousness requires some knowledge, and (genuine) knowledge requires some
> conscious person)?

I agree, but I feel it begs the question: knowledge is an awareness of
something, it implies consciousness by definition.

What is the situation with an artificial neural network? Does it know
something, or is it akin to a stone being kicked down a hill? Or is
the stone being kicked down a hill akin to our brains and requiring
consciousness already?

> Then do you agree with the S4 theory of rational knowledge, which is that
>
> (knowable x) implies x
> (knowable (x implies y)) implies ((knowable x) implies (knowable y))
> (knowable x) implies (knowable (knowable x))
>
> With the inference rules:
>
> If I prove x I can deduce (knowable x)
> + modus ponens

I'm ok with this.

> If you are OK with this, it is not difficult to explain why evolution, or
> anything actually, cannot NOT bring consciousness, and a first person
> knower, in the picture.

Here I don't follow. Aren't you making the hidden assumption:

(knowable x) => (known x) ?

Notice that I do tend to think what you say, that "anything actually,
cannot NOT bring consciousness" -- but I see this as part of my
"personal religion". I'm just not convinced that the above proves it.

> That is a consequence of incompleteness which make the machine aware of the
> difference between []p and []p & p. The machine can know that []p obeys to
> the modal logic G and that ([]p & p), the definition of "knowable" by
> Theaetetus, obeys to the modal logic S4 + Grz (with Grz the Gregorczyk
> formula).
>
> Now, consciousness is not exactly knowledge, but a knowledge of some
> "reality".

But "who" knows? Again, isn't this begging the question?

> It is based on an implicit automated belief in our consistency
> (which is equivalent with the existence of a "model" in the logician sense,
> which means some "reality" satisfying our belief. This makes consciousness
> close to inconsistency.

Interesting idea.

> Then it can be shown that consciousness, which is unavoidable, has still
> some important role in evolution, as it makes the machine self-speed-up-able
> and more and more autonomous relatively to the probable universal
> machine/number which supports them.

For me evolution has a very fractal-like quality to it, in the sense
that it generates machines that become very similar to the machine
where they come from. I am still not convinced that consciousness is
necessary to explain biological complexification. Can you expand?

> Similarly, we get the feeling and the qualia with the logic of []p a p, and
> []p & <>t & p, with p sigma_1. This add the symmetrical (p implies []p) in
> the picture, and leads to quantum sort of logics.

Here I don't follow. You alluded to this quantum-like logic a few
times but you never expanded (I think). I would be interested in a
more detailed explanation.

> It makes also consciousness into a bridge between the 3p arithmetical
> picture and the (many) 1p internal views, including the first person plural
> physics, making this theory testable (and confirmed up to now, both
> introspectively and quantitatively). cf NUMBER ==> CONSCIOUSNESS/DREAM ==>
> PHYSICAL-REALITY.

Do you believe you can make a prediction that could be experimentally
tested, ideally something that has not been observed yet?

> This explains notably why consciousness is what we know the best from the 1p
> view, and yet is completely NOT definable in any 3p sense (like the notion
> of Arithmetical Truth).

You mean because it does not exist in 3p?

> Intutively: consciousness brings the semantics, or the meaning of our
> beliefs, and that speed-up the possible actions of the machine, making the
> development of consciousness an advantage in the evolution, even if it
> brings some amount of self-delusion, like the many confusion between the
> reality that we infer with a reification of the reality that we observe ...
> until Pythagoras and Plato get back to the scientific doubt and skepticism.

I always have a hard time seeing consciousness as causal. What about
does experiments with MRI that show decision being made before the
person in aware of deciding?


T.

>>
 I don't quite understand why an omnipotent being

 would "want" anything, He should already have it.  Nevertheless the

 religious say God does want certain things and they know exactly
 precisely

 what they are and they insist on telling us about it; and they also
 insist

 God can't get what He wants on His own, we have to help the poor fellow

 achieve His aims.

>
 You are describing Abrahamic religions. I don't believe in them either.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't think the
>>> Hindu religion
>>> is significantly less stupid. There are some forms of

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-24 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 23 Feb 2017, at 21:45, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/23/2017 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Feb 2017, at 01:08, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/21/2017 11:03 AM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent:
do you think we are that sure how to identify intelligence and  
consciousness?


Intelligence   (inter-lego)
   I identify from the linguistic origin (Latin) as READING  
BETWEEN THE (properly) EXPRESSED FEATURES - to detect additional  
sense (maybe hidden so far).


Are you going to Bruno on me and adopt some meaning that a  
thousand years out of date.


I can't let you say this Brent. I use always the most common terms  
used by everybody, except the dogmatic minority. I have hundreds of  
book on theology, written mostly by christians and muslims, on  
neoplatonism, and they all use the term "theology" and "god" in the  
greek sense. They don't even mention that they use the greek sense  
as it is compeletely natural in a non-dogmatic context. The  
restricted sense is the popular, non scientific sense used by  
believers in special tradition.


It is rather incredible, but constant, that the strong-atheists  
insist so much on the dogmatic (and pseudo-religious) definitions.  
In science, all theories rename all the terms. We change the  
theories, not the terms, which would lead to confusion and would  
hide the progress. You could as well say that Earth does not exist,  
because it has meant for many centuries: a flat thing on which we  
walk.


The difference is that the billions of theists on the round thing we  
walk on still use "God" to be the Abrahamic superbeing.


Really? Interesting. Maybe they are right or close to right.

Obviously, as scientist, we have to do the math, in our favorite  
theory to see if that matches, and of course, I have already point to  
some discrepancies with the "God" of the universal machine, much close  
to proclus theology (sic) or Plotinus, Moderatus of Gades.


Nevertheless, note that each main branches of the Abrahamic belief has  
kept some sub-branches which basically match that theology (of the  
universal classical machine).


In theology, only the con men could pretend that science has decided  
between Plato/Parmenides/Pythagoras and Aristotle. Mocking theology or  
philosophy of mind makes people confusing physics and metaphysics/ 
theology.


Better not lost the spirit of rigor in all domain. The assumption of a  
primary physical universe is cool, but might need to be tested with  
the (immaterialist) "theology" of the universal number (G, G* and the  
other "hypostases").


Bruno









Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-24 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 23 Feb 2017, at 21:12, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/23/2017 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 20 Feb 2017, at 16:33, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark   
wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:





Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.







As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,



They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious  
something that
makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of  
galaxies
together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that  
makes up 69%
of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to  
accelerate.
And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter  
and energy

that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and  
Quantum
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure  
that is
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between  
theory and
observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair  
to say we
really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is  
almost as

confusing.




If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't

matter?



Science has an explanation for consciousness that works  
beautifully,
consciousness is the way information feels when it is being  
processed

intelligently.


I know that your position is that information processing is
nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is  
the
way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent  
computation".

This "explanation" begs the question already.

Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
is the kind that generates consciousness.

Nobody ever came up with a way to test for the presence of
consciousness (probably because it's the wrong way to think about  
it),
so there is no scientific theory about it. Zero. You make it worse  
by

introducing ill-defined concepts.


What science doesn't yet have is a complete theory explaining
how to produce intelligence, but enormous progress has been made  
in just the

last few years.


Not really. What is happening is that the artificial neural network
models from the 80s are finally paying off, because of the orders of
magnitude more computational power and training data that we have  
now.


Progress is being made, but it has been very slow. It's a hard  
problem.


I've worked in this field both in academia and industry, for what  
it's worth.



The study of intelligence, now that's important!






That is a statement of faith. Gizmo worshiping.



At least 3 times a week for the last 5 years somebody on this  
list has
accused me of being religious, apparently in the hope that I'll  
burst into

tears and cry myself to sleep. It's not going to happen,


I can't talk for the others, but I have no interest in making you  
feel bad.

I'm just pointing out dogmatic thinking.






Yes, it's important in

a sense. I too am interested in having medical breakthroughs,  
freedom


from labour and all the nice things that AI can bring.



It's important even if you're only interested in philosophical  
problems,

such as why did Evolution bother to make conscious animals at all.


Evolution is a theory on the origins of biological complexity. We  
know

nothing about consciousness.



Do you agree that consciousness is a form of knowledge? That is:  
consciousness requires some knowledge, and (genuine) knowledge  
requires some conscious person)?


I don't think knowledge requires consciousness, much less a person.



Then we are talking about different things. Knowledge, in the sense of  
cognitive science, or epistemology, requires a knower, which is  
usually a person. Eventually, we need only to agree on the axioms, and  
propose variant.


In the context of describing "consciousness", it is seen as a  
particular "knowledge". (plausibly [1]<1>t)









Then do you agree with the S4 theory of rational knowledge, which  
is that


A theory of "knowable" is not the same as a theory of knowledge.  A  
theory of knowledge has to include the fact that much less is known  
than is knowable.


OK. It is the "omniscience problem". In the ideal context of the  
arithmetically self-referentially correct machine, this is handled by  
the difference between (x is a proof of y) and Ex(x is a prove of y).  
We can use this to have still different modal variant, like proving-

Re: Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-24 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 23 Feb 2017, at 21:48, Hans Moravec wrote:




On 170223, at 3:23 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:

John McCarthy warned many years ago that we should be careful not  
to create robots that had general intelligence, lest we  
inadvertently create conscious beings to whom we would have  
ethical obligations.


Bruno: And he warn us that we could become the pet of the machine.


No.  He warned that we could become slave owners.


The suggestion that we’d become pets was from Marvin Minsky.



You are right. My mistake.




I think he saw it as a good thing.




Yes, I think that he said something like we should be happy if they  
keep us as pets.


Bruno






--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/23/2017 1:43 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:


I have long thought that I perceive, however wrongly, the birth of new 
species by combining with La Machine. For one, it beats the hell out 
of early death, that all flesh is now heir to. Secondly, it would give 
us all super powers. Think, Iron Man suit, Batman power suit, Mighty 
Morphin Power Rangers, etc, ad nauseum. For the machines, unless they 
wanted to do it non-bio, or bio, by cloning the human amygdala, we fit 
usefully, into their plans by us determining what is crap and what is 
cuddly. I am guessing some kind of suit, headcap, implanted box into 
our system, would benefit both. Nanotech, or implanted into our rear 
sinus cavity. No! in the back of the head! But, hey, whatever floats 
your boats.


It'd be like the Reese's commercials. "You got your peanut butter in 
my chocolate. Well, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" Or 
like the Doublemints commercials "Two, two, two mints in one!" Or like 
the absorption of the mitochondria, by a bacteria, it led to the 
development of multicellular life, which is nicely, synergistic, if 
one thinks about it.


More likely it will be wealthy humans who will have their children 
implanted with a chip that gives them direct mental access to the web 
and other such resources.  So we'll become the Borg.


Brent
Following a Doublemint gum commercial, Arthur Godfrey famously said, 
"Let's face it folks.  If we're going to double our pleasure it's not 
going to be with chewing gum."


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread spudboy100 via Everything List


I have long thought that I perceive, however wrongly, the birth of new species 
by combining with La Machine. For one, it beats the hell out of early death, 
that all flesh is now heir to. Secondly, it would give us all super powers. 
Think, Iron Man suit, Batman power suit, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, etc, ad 
nauseum. For the machines, unless they wanted to do it non-bio, or bio, by 
cloning the human amygdala, we fit usefully, into their plans by us determining 
what is crap and what is cuddly. I am guessing some kind of suit, headcap, 
implanted box into our system, would benefit both. Nanotech, or implanted into 
our rear sinus cavity. No! in the back of the head! But, hey, whatever floats 
your boats. 


It'd be like the Reese's commercials. "You got your peanut butter in my 
chocolate. Well, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" Or like the 
Doublemints commercials "Two, two, two mints in one!" Or like the absorption of 
the mitochondria, by a bacteria, it led to the development of multicellular 
life, which is nicely, synergistic, if one thinks about it. 


-Original Message-
From: Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, Feb 23, 2017 4:01 pm
Subject: Re: Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam





On 2/23/2017 12:48 PM, Hans Moravec  wrote:



  

  
On 170223, at 3:23 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
  
  

  

John McCarthy warned  many years ago that we should be careful 
not to create  robots that had general intelligence, lest we
  inadvertently create conscious beings to whom we would
  have ethical obligations.


Bruno: And he warn us that we could become the pet of   
 the machine.
  
  
  No. He warned that we could become slave owners.

  

  
  
  
The suggestion that we’d become pets was from MarvinMinsky.
  
I think he saw it as a good thing.
  


Yeah, he said that between lesser and greater intelligence he knewwhich 
side he'd take.

Brent
  
-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/23/2017 12:48 PM, Hans Moravec wrote:


On 170223, at 3:23 PM, Brent Meeker > wrote:


John McCarthy warned many years ago that we should be careful not 
to create robots that had general intelligence, lest we 
inadvertently create conscious beings to whom we would have ethical 
obligations.


Bruno: And he warn us that we could become the pet of the machine.


No.  He warned that we could become slave owners.


The suggestion that we’d become pets was from Marvin Minsky.
I think he saw it as a good thing.


Yeah, he said that between lesser and greater intelligence he knew which 
side he'd take.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Hans Moravec


> On 170223, at 3:23 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
>>> John McCarthy warned many years ago that we should be careful not to create 
>>> robots that had general intelligence, lest we inadvertently create 
>>> conscious beings to whom we would have ethical obligations.
>> 
>> Bruno: And he warn us that we could become the pet of the machine.
> 
> No.  He warned that we could become slave owners.

The suggestion that we’d become pets was from Marvin Minsky.
I think he saw it as a good thing.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/23/2017 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Feb 2017, at 01:08, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/21/2017 11:03 AM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent:
do you think we are that sure how to identify /intelligence and 
consciousness? /


*/_Intelligence _ (inter-lego)/*
*__I identify from the linguistic origin (Latin) as READING BETWEEN 
THE (properly) EXPRESSED FEATURES - *to detect additional sense 
(maybe hidden so far).


Are you going to Bruno on me and adopt some meaning that a thousand 
years out of date.


I can't let you say this Brent. I use always the most common terms 
used by everybody, except the dogmatic minority. I have hundreds of 
book on theology, written mostly by christians and muslims, on 
neoplatonism, and they all use the term "theology" and "god" in the 
greek sense. They don't even mention that they use the greek sense as 
it is compeletely natural in a non-dogmatic context. The restricted 
sense is the popular, non scientific sense used by believers in 
special tradition.


It is rather incredible, but constant, that the strong-atheists insist 
so much on the dogmatic (and pseudo-religious) definitions. In 
science, all theories rename all the terms. We change the theories, 
not the terms, which would lead to confusion and would hide the 
progress. You could as well say that Earth does not exist, because it 
has meant for many centuries: a flat thing on which we walk.


The difference is that the billions of theists on the round thing we 
walk on*/still /*use "God" to be the Abrahamic superbeing.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/23/2017 12:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 20 Feb 2017, at 20:52, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/20/2017 7:33 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark  
wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:




Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.



As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,


They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious 
something that
makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of 
galaxies
together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that 
makes up 69%
of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to 
accelerate.
And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter 
and energy

that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that is
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between 
theory and
observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to 
say we
really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is 
almost as

confusing.


If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't

matter?


Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed
intelligently.

I know that your position is that information processing is
nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
This "explanation" begs the question already.

Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
is the kind that generates consciousness.


No, intelligent processing it that which leads to useful activity 
toward a goal.  That's why consciousness has to be consciousness OF a 
world in which action is possible.  It only exists in a context.


I am OK, with "model" in place of "world". But those are close.






For me, the interesting question is whether there can be intelligence 
without consciousness,


When we do something intelligent (a priori) a billion times, we can do 
it without consciousness (like walking), but is it still intelligent?

Here, I would say that it depends of what we mean by "intelligent".



or more accurately can there be intelligence which is conscious in a 
different way.


different from what?


Different from the way I am conscious: A stream of narrative and images 
which mixes memories, feelings, and perceptions into a sort of coherent 
story.  I think this story is a way compressing what goes into memory so 
that it can be used for learning - at least if I were designing a robot 
and I used this technique for storing information to later be used in 
learning (i.e. reducing the information to a coherent stream) I would 
identify that part of the design as the "consciousness module".  But I 
can imagine designing the robot differently.  For example, if memory 
were very cheap and fast of access I might not try to filter experience 
into small stream of information before storing it - I might just put it 
all in and evaulate for learning later.  Or I can imagine designing the 
robot so that more than one coherent stream were produced based on 
different value weights and there were several learning modules based on 
different techniques and action decisions involved voting.







 We can see from Big Blue, Watson, and deep neural nets that there 
can be intelligence based different kinds of information processing.  
I suspect this means there would be different kinds of consciousness 
associated with them - but how could we know and what would it mean?  
John McCarthy warned many years ago that we should be careful not to 
create robots that had general intelligence, lest we inadvertently 
create conscious beings to whom we would have ethical obligations.


And he warn us that we could become the pet of the machine.


No.  He warned that we could become slave owners.

Brent

In fact if we continue to treat "corporation" as person, we will 
ultimately become the slaves of the machine, and most plausibly, a 
slave that the machine will stop to afford the price. We might 
disappear if this happens before we digitalize ourself completely. We 
are on a bad slope with respect to this, alas.


Bruno


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this

Re: Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/23/2017 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 20 Feb 2017, at 16:33, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark  
wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:





Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.







As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,



They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious something 
that
makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of 
galaxies
together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that makes 
up 69%
of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to 
accelerate.
And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter 
and energy

that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that is
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between theory 
and
observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to 
say we
really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is 
almost as

confusing.




If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't

matter?



Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed
intelligently.


I know that your position is that information processing is
nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
This "explanation" begs the question already.

Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
is the kind that generates consciousness.

Nobody ever came up with a way to test for the presence of
consciousness (probably because it's the wrong way to think about it),
so there is no scientific theory about it. Zero. You make it worse by
introducing ill-defined concepts.


What science doesn't yet have is a complete theory explaining
how to produce intelligence, but enormous progress has been made in 
just the

last few years.


Not really. What is happening is that the artificial neural network
models from the 80s are finally paying off, because of the orders of
magnitude more computational power and training data that we have now.

Progress is being made, but it has been very slow. It's a hard problem.

I've worked in this field both in academia and industry, for what 
it's worth.



The study of intelligence, now that's important!






That is a statement of faith. Gizmo worshiping.



At least 3 times a week for the last 5 years somebody on this list has
accused me of being religious, apparently in the hope that I'll 
burst into

tears and cry myself to sleep. It's not going to happen,


I can't talk for the others, but I have no interest in making you 
feel bad.

I'm just pointing out dogmatic thinking.






Yes, it's important in

a sense. I too am interested in having medical breakthroughs, freedom

from labour and all the nice things that AI can bring.



It's important even if you're only interested in philosophical 
problems,

such as why did Evolution bother to make conscious animals at all.


Evolution is a theory on the origins of biological complexity. We know
nothing about consciousness.



Do you agree that consciousness is a form of knowledge? That is: 
consciousness requires some knowledge, and (genuine) knowledge 
requires some conscious person)?


I don't think knowledge requires consciousness, much less a person.



Then do you agree with the S4 theory of rational knowledge, which is that


A theory of "knowable" is not the same as a theory of knowledge.  A 
theory of knowledge has to include the fact that much less is known than 
is knowable.




(knowable x) implies x
(knowable (x implies y)) implies ((knowable x) implies (knowable y))
(knowable x) implies (knowable (knowable x))

With the inference rules:

If I prove x I can deduce (knowable x)
+ modus ponens


Proof is realtive to premises.  If you can prove x from true premises, 
THEN it's knowable.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 22 Feb 2017, at 01:08, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/21/2017 11:03 AM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent:
do you think we are that sure how to identify intelligence and  
consciousness?


Intelligence   (inter-lego)
   I identify from the linguistic origin (Latin) as READING BETWEEN  
THE (properly) EXPRESSED FEATURES - to detect additional sense  
(maybe hidden so far).


Are you going to Bruno on me and adopt some meaning that a thousand  
years out of date.


I can't let you say this Brent. I use always the most common terms  
used by everybody, except the dogmatic minority. I have hundreds of  
book on theology, written mostly by christians and muslims, on  
neoplatonism, and they all use the term "theology" and "god" in the  
greek sense. They don't even mention that they use the greek sense as  
it is compeletely natural in a non-dogmatic context. The restricted  
sense is the popular, non scientific sense used by believers in  
special tradition.


It is rather incredible, but constant, that the strong-atheists insist  
so much on the dogmatic (and pseudo-religious) definitions. In  
science, all theories rename all the terms. We change the theories,  
not the terms, which would lead to confusion and would hide the  
progress. You could as well say that Earth does not exist, because it  
has meant for many centuries: a flat thing on which we walk.


Bruno



I pretty sure how to identify intelligence... but not consciousness.

Brent



Consciousness  is harder,  principally as EVERYTHING being  
conscious of itself to some extent, identifying quantitative/ 
qualitative (plus: so far unidentified) relations, acting/response  
domains and being sensitive to actions of ANYTHING else.


Both are in line of agnosticism (not the theist/atheist kind, of  
course).


I wonder if I come close to YOUR definitions?

John Mikes



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 18 Feb 2017, at 01:19, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:

>> Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.

> As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of  
current

theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,

They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious  
something that makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and  
clusters of galaxies together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious  
something that makes up 69% of everything and causes the expansion  
of the entire universe to accelerate. And about 4% of the universe  
is made of the sort of normal matter and energy that until about 20  
years ago was the only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and  
Quantum Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a  
figure that is 10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch  
between theory and observation in the entire history of science. I  
think it's fair to say we really don't have a clue about Dark  
Energy, and Dark Matter is almost as confusing.  

> If science failed so far at explaining something, then it  
doesn't matter?

Science has an explanation for consciousness that works  
beautifully, consciousness is the way information feels when it is  
being processed intelligently. What science doesn't yet have is a  
complete theory explaining how to produce intelligence, but enormous  
progress has been made in just the last few years. 

>> The study of intelligence, now that's important!

> That is a statement of faith. Gizmo worshiping.

At least 3 times a week for the last 5 years somebody on this  
list has accused me of being religious,

That "accusation" would have been a compliment.

No, I accuse you of being pseudo-religious, like the Churches, that is  
dogmatic. In fact, I don't accuse you, I just point on the fact that  
when we assume computationalism, as you do, you can NOT invoke your  
ontological commitment (Matter) to select a computation among the  
infinitely many computations going through your state and realized in  
the arithmetical reality. It is not a valid way to explain the  
experiences. It is equivalent with the creationist dogmatic "God made  
it". Calling such God "matter" explains nothing, and hides the problem.

apparently in the hope that I'll burst into tears and cry myself to  
sleep. It's not going to happen,

> Yes, it's important in a sense. I too am interested in  
having medical breakthroughs, freedom from labour and all the nice  
things that AI can bring.

It's important even if you're only interested in philosophical  
problems, such as why did Evolution bother to make conscious animals  
at all.  

See my answer and questions to Telmo.

>>  I don't quite understand why an omnipotent being  would  
"want" anything, He should already have it.  Nevertheless the   
religious say God does want certain things and they know exactly  
precisely  what they are and they insist on telling us about it;  
and they also insist God can't get what He wants on His own, we  
have to help the poor fellow  achieve His aims.

> You are describing Abrahamic religions. I don't believe in  
them either.

I don't think the Hindu religion is significantly less  
stupid. There are some forms of Buddhism and Taoism that aren't  
stupid but they aren't religions, they don't say anything about God,  
don't say faith is a virtue, and don't even claim they are revealing  
something new about the world, instead they are doing something much  
more modest, they are giving personal advice; they are saying this  
is a way to be happy. Not the only way, maybe not the best way, just  
a way.

>I think you are not interested in what Bruno has to say.  
There's

nothing wrong with that, but it's just a personal preference of yours.

Well yes, but how could not being interested in something not be  
a personal preference.

Idem.

Bruno

John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to

Consciousness/Intelligence (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 20 Feb 2017, at 20:52, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/20/2017 7:33 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark   
wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:




Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.



As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,


They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious  
something that
makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of  
galaxies
together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that  
makes up 69%
of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to  
accelerate.
And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter  
and energy

that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and  
Quantum
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure  
that is
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between  
theory and
observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to  
say we
really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is  
almost as

confusing.


If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't

matter?


Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
consciousness is the way information feels when it is being  
processed

intelligently.

I know that your position is that information processing is
nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
This "explanation" begs the question already.

Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
is the kind that generates consciousness.


No, intelligent processing it that which leads to useful activity  
toward a goal.  That's why consciousness has to be consciousness OF  
a world in which action is possible.  It only exists in a context.


I am OK, with "model" in place of "world". But those are close.






For me, the interesting question is whether there can be  
intelligence without consciousness,


When we do something intelligent (a priori) a billion times, we can do  
it without consciousness (like walking), but is it still intelligent?

Here, I would say that it depends of what we mean by "intelligent".



or more accurately can there be intelligence which is conscious in a  
different way.


different from what?




 We can see from Big Blue, Watson, and deep neural nets that there  
can be intelligence based different kinds of information  
processing.  I suspect this means there would be different kinds of  
consciousness associated with them - but how could we know and what  
would it mean?  John McCarthy warned many years ago that we should  
be careful not to create robots that had general intelligence, lest  
we inadvertently create conscious beings to whom we would have  
ethical obligations.


And he warn us that we could become the pet of the machine. In fact if  
we continue to treat "corporation" as person, we will ultimately  
become the slaves of the machine, and most plausibly, a slave that the  
machine will stop to afford the price. We might disappear if this  
happens before we digitalize ourself completely. We are on a bad slope  
with respect to this, alas.


Bruno





Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Consciousness (was Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-23 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 20 Feb 2017, at 16:33, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark   
wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:





Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.







As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,



They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious  
something that
makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of  
galaxies
together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that  
makes up 69%
of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to  
accelerate.
And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter  
and energy

that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and  
Quantum
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that  
is
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between  
theory and
observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to  
say we
really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is  
almost as

confusing.




If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't

matter?



Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed
intelligently.


I know that your position is that information processing is
nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
This "explanation" begs the question already.

Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
is the kind that generates consciousness.

Nobody ever came up with a way to test for the presence of
consciousness (probably because it's the wrong way to think about it),
so there is no scientific theory about it. Zero. You make it worse by
introducing ill-defined concepts.


What science doesn't yet have is a complete theory explaining
how to produce intelligence, but enormous progress has been made in  
just the

last few years.


Not really. What is happening is that the artificial neural network
models from the 80s are finally paying off, because of the orders of
magnitude more computational power and training data that we have now.

Progress is being made, but it has been very slow. It's a hard  
problem.


I've worked in this field both in academia and industry, for what  
it's worth.



The study of intelligence, now that's important!






That is a statement of faith. Gizmo worshiping.



At least 3 times a week for the last 5 years somebody on this list  
has
accused me of being religious, apparently in the hope that I'll  
burst into

tears and cry myself to sleep. It's not going to happen,


I can't talk for the others, but I have no interest in making you  
feel bad.

I'm just pointing out dogmatic thinking.






Yes, it's important in

a sense. I too am interested in having medical breakthroughs,  
freedom


from labour and all the nice things that AI can bring.



It's important even if you're only interested in philosophical  
problems,

such as why did Evolution bother to make conscious animals at all.


Evolution is a theory on the origins of biological complexity. We know
nothing about consciousness.



Do you agree that consciousness is a form of knowledge? That is:  
consciousness requires some knowledge, and (genuine) knowledge  
requires some conscious person)?


Then do you agree with the S4 theory of rational knowledge, which is  
that


(knowable x) implies x
(knowable (x implies y)) implies ((knowable x) implies (knowable y))
(knowable x) implies (knowable (knowable x))

With the inference rules:

If I prove x I can deduce (knowable x)
+ modus ponens


If you are OK with this, it is not difficult to explain why evolution,  
or anything actually, cannot NOT bring consciousness, and a first  
person knower, in the picture.
That is a consequence of incompleteness which make the machine aware  
of the difference between []p and []p & p. The machine can know that  
[]p obeys to the modal logic G and that ([]p & p), the definition of  
"knowable" by Theaetetus, obeys to the modal logic S4 + Grz (with Grz  
the Gregorczyk formula).


Now, consciousness is not exactly knowledge, but a knowledge of some  
"reality". It is based on an implicit automated belief in our  
consistency (which is equivalent with the existence of a "model" in  
the logician sense, which means some "reality" satisfying our

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-21 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/21/2017 11:03 AM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent:
do you think we are that sure how to identify /intelligence and 
consciousness? /


*/_Intelligence _ (inter-lego)/*
*__I identify from the linguistic origin (Latin) as READING BETWEEN 
THE (properly) EXPRESSED FEATURES - *to detect additional sense (maybe 
hidden so far).


Are you going to Bruno on me and adopt some meaning that a thousand 
years out of date.  I pretty sure how to identify intelligence... but 
not consciousness.


Brent



/_Consciousness_/  is harder,  principally as EVERYTHING being 
conscious of itself to some extent, identifying 
quantitative/qualitative (plus: so far unidentified)_relations,_ 
acting/response domains and being sensitive to actions of ANYTHING else.


Both are in line of agnosticism (not the theist/atheist kind, of course).

I wonder if I come close to YOUR definitions?

John Mikes


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-21 Thread John Mikes

Brent:
do you think we are that sure how to identify *intelligence and
consciousness? *

*Intelligence   (inter-lego)*
*   I identify from the linguistic origin (Latin) as READING BETWEEN THE
(properly) EXPRESSED FEATURES - *to detect additional sense (maybe hidden
so far).

*Consciousness*  is harder,  principally as EVERYTHING being conscious of
itself to some extent, identifying quantitative/qualitative (plus: so far
unidentified)* relations,* acting/response domains and being sensitive to
actions of ANYTHING else.

Both are in line of agnosticism (not the theist/atheist kind, of course).

I wonder if I come close to YOUR definitions?

John Mikes



On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 2:52 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 2/20/2017 7:33 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark  wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>> Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.
>


 As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
 theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
 things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
 universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,

>>>
>>> They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious something that
>>> makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of galaxies
>>> together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that makes up
>>> 69%
>>> of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to
>>> accelerate.
>>> And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter and
>>> energy
>>> that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.
>>>
>>> There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and Quantum
>>> Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that is
>>> 10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between theory and
>>> observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to say we
>>> really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is almost as
>>> confusing.
>>>
>>> If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't

 matter?

>>>
>>> Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
>>> consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed
>>> intelligently.
>>>
>> I know that your position is that information processing is
>> nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
>> with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
>> way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
>> This "explanation" begs the question already.
>>
>> Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
>> does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
>> and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
>> is the kind that generates consciousness.
>>
>
> No, intelligent processing it that which leads to useful activity toward a
> goal.  That's why consciousness has to be consciousness OF a world in which
> action is possible.  It only exists in a context.
>
> For me, the interesting question is whether there can be intelligence
> without consciousness, or more accurately can there be intelligence which
> is conscious in a different way.  We can see from Big Blue, Watson, and
> deep neural nets that there can be intelligence based different kinds of
> information processing.  I suspect this means there would be different
> kinds of consciousness associated with them - but how could we know and
> what would it mean?  John McCarthy warned many years ago that we should be
> careful not to create robots that had general intelligence, lest we
> inadvertently create conscious beings to whom we would have ethical
> obligations.
>
> Brent
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-20 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Feb 20, 2017  Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> > 
> So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
>  
> way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
>

More precisely what I am saying is 
consciousness is the

way
 data feels like when it is being processed.

> > 
> This "explanation" begs the question
>

If the chain of "why" questions extends far enough the question is *always*
begged because there are only 2 possibilities, 
the chain of why questions extends 
to infinity and never ends, or it ends in a brute fact and there is no
"why" to explain it.

 You may not find either possibility to be entirely satisfactory but
reality doesn't care if you like it or not, that's just the way things are.

> > 
> Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently".

That's not all, there is also 
the issue of defining
"defining". I said it before I'll say it again, definitions are
derivative, real knowledge comes from examples not definitions.

> > 
> What
>  
> does that even mean?

Mean? That word is unfamiliar to me, so please use other words to explain
the word "mean". And then use more words to explain the words you used to
explain the word "mean". And then use yet more words to explain the words
you used to explain the word "mean". And then use even more words to
explain the words you used to explain the words you used to explain the
word "mean". And then.

So why isn't language just random noise? It's certainly not because of
definitions, it's because of examples from the real world. I point to a
roughly cylindrical  food and say "banana"  and children get the idea. In
fact if you ask a child "what is a banana?" they won't say "a berry
produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus
Musa", instead they  will just point to one.

> > 
> Where do you draw the line between intelligent
>  
> and non-intelligent processing?

Not everything is separated by a line, some things are separated by a
fuzzy blob. A 70 pound man is undoubtedly thin, a 700 pound man is
undoubtedly fat, and yet there is no sharp line between fat and thin.
There is not a exact instant where day turns into night, and yet there is a
difference between day and night that is as clear as, well, day and night.

> > 
> Let me guess: intelligent processing
>  
> is the kind that generates consciousness.
>

No you guessed wrong. I judge that intelligent processing
 is the sort of thing that if done by a man Telmo Menezes would make a
noise with his mouth that sounds like "that man is smart". And yes it's a
judgement call and judgement can be wrong, but it's the only tool we have.

> > 
> Nobody ever came up with a way to test for the presence of
>  
> consciousness (probably because it's the wrong way to think about it),
>  
> so there is no scientific theory about it. Zero.

I agree, so why is it so many on this list want to talk about nothing
except consciousness when all such discussions lead precisely nowhere? I'll
tell you why, because it's easy, no consciousness theory can every be
proven wrong. Intelligence theories on the other hand are devilishly hard
and that's why few want to talk about those even though they do lead
somewhere.   

> >
>> >
>> What science doesn't yet have is a complete theory explaining
>> 
>>  how to produce intelligence, but enormous progress has been made in just
>> the
>> last few years.
>
>
> > 
> Not really. What is happening is that the artificial neural network
> models from the 80s are finally paying off, because of the orders of
> magnitude more computational power and training data that we have now.
>

Even if improved hardware were the entire answer (it's not) how do you
figure that's not enormous progress?

> 
> Progress is being made, but it has been very slow.

If progress in AI is slow it's because
they

keep moving the goal posts and say that true AI is whatever computers
aren't good at *YET*.

B
a
ck in 1997

after a computer became the world's best chess player chess grand master
Hans Berliner
 said:

"
What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the
par excellence of intellectual activity
.
Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called
Go"

In 2008 
Milton N. Bradley
 said:

"
In sharp contrast
 [to chess]
 the best computer Go programs are still mired at just beyond an advanced
beginner's level
", and to play GO " immense
scale makes the application of "standard" techniques infeasible even on
supercomputers.
[Go] 
Requires a real breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence which has not yet
been achieved.
"

http://users.eniinternet.com/bradleym/Compare.html

But things have changed since 2008, back then intelligence was needed to
win at GO but in 2016 a computer became the world's best GO player, so that
means GO no longer requires intelligence.

> 
>

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-20 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/20/2017 7:33 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark  wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:




Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.



As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,


They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious something that
makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of galaxies
together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that makes up 69%
of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to accelerate.
And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter and energy
that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that is
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between theory and
observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to say we
really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is almost as
confusing.


If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't

matter?


Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed
intelligently.

I know that your position is that information processing is
nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
This "explanation" begs the question already.

Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
is the kind that generates consciousness.


No, intelligent processing it that which leads to useful activity toward 
a goal.  That's why consciousness has to be consciousness OF a world in 
which action is possible.  It only exists in a context.


For me, the interesting question is whether there can be intelligence 
without consciousness, or more accurately can there be intelligence 
which is conscious in a different way.  We can see from Big Blue, 
Watson, and deep neural nets that there can be intelligence based 
different kinds of information processing.  I suspect this means there 
would be different kinds of consciousness associated with them - but how 
could we know and what would it mean?  John McCarthy warned many years 
ago that we should be careful not to create robots that had general 
intelligence, lest we inadvertently create conscious beings to whom we 
would have ethical obligations.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-20 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 1:19 AM, John Clark  wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>> As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
>> theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
>> things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
>> universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,
>
>
> They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious something that
> makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of galaxies
> together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that makes up 69%
> of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to accelerate.
> And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal matter and energy
> that until about 20 years ago was the only type we thought existed.
>
> There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and Quantum
> Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that is
> 10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between theory and
> observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to say we
> really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is almost as
> confusing.
>
>> >
>> If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't
>>
>> matter?
>
>
> Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
> consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed
> intelligently.

I know that your position is that information processing is
nonsensical without matter. Many times you invited Bruno to compete
with Intel, etc. So what you are saying is that "consciousness is the
way matter feels when it participates in an intelligent computation".
This "explanation" begs the question already.

Then there's the issue of defining "processed intelligently". What
does that even mean? Where do you draw the line between intelligent
and non-intelligent processing? Let me guess: intelligent processing
is the kind that generates consciousness.

Nobody ever came up with a way to test for the presence of
consciousness (probably because it's the wrong way to think about it),
so there is no scientific theory about it. Zero. You make it worse by
introducing ill-defined concepts.

> What science doesn't yet have is a complete theory explaining
> how to produce intelligence, but enormous progress has been made in just the
> last few years.

Not really. What is happening is that the artificial neural network
models from the 80s are finally paying off, because of the orders of
magnitude more computational power and training data that we have now.

Progress is being made, but it has been very slow. It's a hard problem.

I've worked in this field both in academia and industry, for what it's worth.

>>> The study of intelligence, now that's important!
>>
>>
>> >
>> That is a statement of faith. Gizmo worshiping.
>
>
> At least 3 times a week for the last 5 years somebody on this list has
> accused me of being religious, apparently in the hope that I'll burst into
> tears and cry myself to sleep. It's not going to happen,

I can't talk for the others, but I have no interest in making you feel bad.
I'm just pointing out dogmatic thinking.

>>
>> >
>> Yes, it's important in
>>
>> a sense. I too am interested in having medical breakthroughs, freedom
>>
>> from labour and all the nice things that AI can bring.
>
>
> It's important even if you're only interested in philosophical problems,
> such as why did Evolution bother to make conscious animals at all.

Evolution is a theory on the origins of biological complexity. We know
nothing about consciousness.

>> I don't quite understand why an omnipotent being
>>
>>  would "want" anything, He should already have it.  Nevertheless the
>>
>>  religious say God does want certain things and they know exactly
>> precisely
>>
>>  what they are and they insist on telling us about it; and they also
>> insist
>>
>> God can't get what He wants on His own, we have to help the poor fellow
>>
>>  achieve His aims.
>>
>> >
>> You are describing Abrahamic religions. I don't believe in them either.
>
>
> I don't think the
>  Hindu religion
> is significantly less stupid. There are some forms of Buddhism and Taoism
> that aren't stupid but they aren't religions, they don't say anything about
> God, don't say faith is a virtue, and don't even claim they are revealing
> something new about the world, instead they are doing something much more
> modest, they are giving personal advice; they are saying this is a way to be
> happy. Not the only way, maybe not the best way, just a way.

Ok, so you only recognise something as a religion if you think it's
stupid. Not hard to win an argument with that move...

>> >
>> I think you are not interested in what Bruno has to say. There's
>> nothing wrong with that, but

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-19 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/19/2017 9:59 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Yeah, the idea that Dark energy is something we know today, more than 
17 years ago, doesn't seem accurate. We have has several astronomical 
surveys that indicate a range of things, and nothing for certain. One 
survey has indicated that because the universe is now guesstimated to 
have 10-20 times more galaxies, then estimated 25 years ago, this 
would wipe out dark matter as a source of mass.


?? Dark matter is the hypothetical gravitating stuff responsible for the 
rotation curves of galaxies.  Discovering more galaxies has no relevance 
to it.  The Bullet Cluster provides strong evidence that it doesn't 
interact with ordinary matter or with itself other than gravitationally.


Brent


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-19 Thread spudboy100 via Everything List

Yeah, the idea that Dark energy is something we know today, more than 17 years 
ago, doesn't seem accurate. We have has several astronomical surveys that 
indicate a range of things, and nothing for certain. One survey has indicated 
that because the universe is now guesstimated to have 10-20 times more 
galaxies, then estimated 25 years ago, this would wipe out dark matter as a 
source of mass. Normal matter in the form of a galaxy would thus, exclude the 
need to postulate, an  unknown dark source. Or, dark matter and energy could 
exist, but as what? Axions? Some flavor of Higgs?  I am thinking that until we 
get off-planet in a big way, with space-borne radio telescopes, LIGO's, and 
Neutrino tasters, we will be always shut away from the facts about what the 
dark is??

-Original Message-
From: Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Feb 18, 2017 7:04 pm
Subject: Re: From Atheism to Islam

On 2/18/2017 3:14 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at5:07 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> 
wrote:

>
  he  
[Einstein]
  didn't notice that it was an unstable 
 equilibrium - a very elementary mistake.

I  would humbly submit that when trying to figure out  
what 4-dimensional non-Euclidean 
Tensor  calculus  
istelling you about physics 
  nothing  
is very elementary, especially not in 1917.

>
  But the holographic principle can yield a value close 
 the the observed. 

How close? In science if your theory  predicts something that 
differs from the observed  value by a factor of 2 that's 
generally considered to  be pretty damn bad, and we're talking 
about 10^120.  They may have come up with something closer than 
10^  120, but close? I don't think so;at least not unless   
   they worked backward and invented a 120 digit number 
 and inserted it ad hoc into the theory so things come  out 
right. 

It's not a matter of working backward; it's discarding the idea that
quantum fields zero-point energy fills volumes of space.   FromHsu's paper;

Note that Lambda_qm is the value that has been calculated as off bya 
factor of 1e120.  Lambda_0 is a purely geometrical term -Einstein's 
constant of integration.  The current estimate is 1e-12eV^4.  So Hsu is off 
by two orders of magnitude on the negativeenergy density.

Brent

But that would be cheating because if you  can't get more out 
of a theory than you put in it has  no use, and a 120 digit 
number is a lot to put in. I  don't think we're going to have a 
good explanation for  Dark Energy anytime soon, but I hope I'm 
wrong.  

>
  Sean Carroll has considered this in his review article
  https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0004075v2

That article is 17 years old, and Dark Energy  is as big a 
mystery now as it was then.  

John  K Clark

  -- 
  You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
  To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
  To post to this

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-18 Thread Brent Meeker

On 2/18/2017 3:14 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 5:07 PM, Brent Meeker >wrote:

> 
he
[Einstein] 
didn't notice that it was an unstable equilibrium - a very
elementary mistake.

I would humbly submit that when trying to figure out what 
4-dimensional non-Euclidean

Tensor calculus
is telling you about physics 
nothing
 is very elementary, especially not in 1917.

> 
But the holographic principle can yield a value close the the
observed.

How close? In science if your theory predicts something that differs 
from the observed value by a factor of 2 that's generally considered 
to be pretty damn bad, and we're talking about 10^120. They may have 
come up with something closer than 10^ 120, but close? I don't think 
so;at least not unless they worked backward and invented a 120 digit 
number and inserted it ad hoc into the theory so things come out right.

It's not a matter of working backward; it's discarding the idea that 
quantum fields zero-point energy fills volumes of space.   From Hsu's paper;

Note that Lambda_qm is the value that has been calculated as off by a 
factor of 1e120.  Lambda_0 is a purely geometrical term - Einstein's 
constant of integration.  The current estimate is 1e-12 eV^4.  So Hsu is 
off by two orders of magnitude on the negative energy density.

Brent

But that would be cheating because if you can't get more out of a 
theory than you put in it has no use, and a 120 digit number is a lot 
to put in. I don't think we're going to have a good explanation for 
Dark Energy anytime soon, but I hope I'm wrong.

> 
Sean Carroll has considered this in his review article
https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0004075v2

That article is 17 years old, and Dark Energy is as big a mystery now 
as it was then.

John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-18 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 5:07 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:

> > 
> he
> [Einstein] 
> didn't notice that it was an unstable equilibrium - a very elementary
> mistake.
>

I would humbly submit that when trying to figure out what 4-dimensional
non-Euclidean
Tensor calculus
is telling you about physics 
nothing
 is very elementary, especially not in 1917.

> > 
> But the holographic principle can yield a value close the the observed.
>

How close? In science if your theory predicts something that differs from
the observed value by a factor of 2 that's generally considered to be
pretty damn bad, and we're talking about 10^120. They may have come up with
something closer than 10^ 120, but close? I don't think so; at least not
unless they worked backward and invented a 120 digit number and inserted it
ad hoc into the theory so things come out right. But that would be cheating
because if you can't get more out of a theory than you put in it has no
use, and a 120 digit number is a lot to put in. I don't think we're going
to have a good explanation for Dark Energy anytime soon, but I hope I'm
wrong.

> > 
> Sean Carroll has considered this in his review article
> https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0004075v2
>

That article is 17 years old, and Dark Energy is as big a mystery now as
it was then.

John K Clark

>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-18 Thread Brent Meeker

On 2/18/2017 10:18 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 11:19 PM, Brent Meeker > wrote

> 
The cosmological constant appears as an integration constant in
solutions to Einstein's equations.

Yes, so mathematically it could have any value including zero. 

> 
It would be good to know more about the CC, but we actually "know"
more about it than we do about dark matter.

The Cosmological Constant amount
s
 to a repulsive effect that comes from space itself, and

you can set that constant to anything and mathematically the field 
equations of General Relativity would still work just fine. 
Originally Einstein saw no physical reason for that additional 
complication so he set it to zero. But then he noticed that if it 
was zero the universe could not be stable,

No, he saw that it could not be in equilibrium.  He put in the CC and 
gave it a value that balanced the gravitational attraction of the 
observed matter so that the system was in equilibrium.  However, he 
didn't notice that it was an unstable equilibrium - a very elementary 
mistake.

it must be expanding or contracting

and at the time everybody including Einstein thought the universe 
was stable so he set it to a non zero value and the cosmological 
constant was born. However just a few years later Hubble found the 
universe was expanding, so Einstein thought the cosmological 
constant no longer had a purpose and said that changing it from zero 
was the greatest mistake of his life.

Right.  Einstein was a genius who was so smart that when the thought he 
made a mistake, he was wrong.

Then people working with quantum mechanics found that empty space 
should indeed have a repulsive effect, but the numbers were huge, 
gigantic astronomical, so large that the universe would blow itself

apart in
much
less than a billionth of a trillionth of a nanosecond. This was 
clearly a nonsensical result but most felt that once a quantum theory 
of gravity was discovered a way would be found to cancel this out and 
the true value of the cosmological constant would be zero.

But then
 just a few years ago it was observed that the universe is not just 
expanding but accelerating, so now theoreticians must find a way to 
cancel out, not the entire cosmological constant, but the vastly more 
difficult task of canceling it all out *EXCEPT* for one part in 
10^120. There are only about 10^90 atoms in the observable universe.

 Nobody has a clue how to do this.

Actually there are several ideas about how to do this - but none that 
have been worked out to the point of being testable.  One is my friend 
Vic Stenger's idea that one should take the Bekenstein bound on entropy 
seriously and apply it to the Hubble volume.  The 10^120 number comes 
from assuming that each quantum field contributes zero-point energy down 
to de Broglie wavelengths as small as the Planck length, L. But the 
holographic principle can yield a value close the the observed.

http://journals.aps.org.secure.sci-hub.ac/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.081301

This is not generally accepted at "the solution" because it seems to 
imply the wrong equation of state for inflation; but there may be ways 
around this:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0403052.pdf

Sean Carroll has considered this in his review article 
https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0004075v2

/More generally, it is now understood that (at least in some 
circumstances) string theory//
//obeys the “holographic principle”, the idea that a theory with gravity 
in D dimensions//
//is equivalent to a theory without gravity in D−1 dimensions [148, 
149]. In a holographic//
//theory, the number of degrees of freedom in a region grows as the area 
of its boundary,//
//rather than as its volume. Therefore, the conventional computation of 
the cosmological//
//constant due to vacuum fluctuations conceivably involves a vast 
overcounting of degrees//
//of freedom. We might imagine that a more correct counting would yield 
a much smaller//
//estimate of the vacuum energy [150, 151, 152, 153], although no 
reliable calculation//

//has been done as yet

/Brent/
/

 John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-18 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 11:19 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote


> > 
> The cosmological constant appears as an integration constant in solutions
> to Einstein's equations.
> 
>

Yes, so mathematically it could have any value including zero. 


> > 
> It would be good to know more about the CC, but we actually "know" more
> about it than we do about dark matter.
>

The Cosmological Constant amount
s
 to a repulsive effect that comes from space itself, and
 
you can set that constant to anything and mathematically the field
equations of General Relativity would still work just fine. Originally
Einstein saw no physical reason for that additional complication so he
set it to zero. But then he noticed that if it was zero the universe
could not be stable, it must be expanding or contracting
 
and at the time everybody including Einstein thought the universe was
stable so he set it to a non zero value and the cosmological constant was
born. However just a few years later Hubble found the universe was
expanding, so Einstein thought the cosmological constant no longer had a
purpose and said that changing it from zero was the greatest mistake of
his life.



Then people working with quantum mechanics found that empty space
should indeed have a repulsive effect, but the numbers were huge,
gigantic astronomical, so large that the universe would blow itself
 
apart in
much
less than a billionth of a trillionth of a nanosecond. This was clearly a
nonsensical result but most felt that once a quantum theory of gravity was
discovered a way would be found to cancel this out and the true value of
the cosmological constant would be zero.

But then
 just a few years ago it was observed that the universe is not just
expanding but accelerating, so now theoreticians must find a way to cancel
out, not the entire cosmological constant, but the vastly more difficult
task of canceling it all out *EXCEPT* for one part in 10^120. There are
only about 10^90 atoms in the observable universe.
 Nobody has a clue how to do this.


 John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-17 Thread Brent Meeker

On 2/17/2017 4:19 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes >wrote:

>
>
Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.

> 
As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,

They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious something 
that makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of 
galaxies together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something 
that makes up 69% of everything and causes the expansion of the entire 
universe to accelerate. And about 4% of the universe is made of the 
sort of normal matter and energy that until about 20 years ago was the 
only type we thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and Quantum 
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that is 
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between theory 
and observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to 
say we really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is 
almost as confusing.

I think there's a lack of appreciation of what kind of knowledge science 
obtains.  Roughly speaking it provides descriptions which are complete 
and precise enough to use to make some accurate predictions in a range 
of phenomena.  The cosmological constant appears as an integration 
constant in solutions to Einstein's equations.  And we can measure it's 
value and use the equations to make good predictions.  So in a sense we 
know as much about it as Newton knew about gravity (he didn't know why 
the gravitational constant took the value it did either).  It would be 
good to know more about the CC, but we actually "know" more about it 
than we do about dark matter.

Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, 
they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct 
which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes 
observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct 
is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

--—John von Neumann

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-17 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 Telmo Menezes  wrote:

>
>> >
>> Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.
>
>

> 
> As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
> theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
> things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
> universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else,

They are 2 separate mysteries. Dark Matter is a mysterious something that
makes up 28% of the universe and holds galaxies and clusters of galaxies
together. Dark Energy is a even more mysterious something that makes up 69%
of everything and causes the expansion of the entire universe to
accelerate. And about 4% of the universe is made of the sort of normal
matter and energy that until about 20 years ago was the only type we
thought existed.

There is a straightforward extension of General Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics that explains Dark Energy, however it gives a figure that is
10^120 too large, it's been called the worse mismatch between theory and
observation in the entire history of science. I think it's fair to say we
really don't have a clue about Dark Energy, and Dark Matter is almost as
confusing.  

> 
> If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't
> 
> matter?

Science has an explanation for consciousness that works beautifully,
consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed
intelligently. What science doesn't yet have is a complete theory
explaining how to produce intelligence, but enormous progress has been made
in just the last few years. 

>
>> >
>> The study of intelligence, now that's important!
>
>
> > 
> That is a statement of faith. Gizmo worshiping.

At least 3 times a week for the last 5 years somebody on this list has
accused me of being religious, apparently in the hope that I'll burst into
tears and cry myself to sleep. It's not going to happen,

> > 
> Yes, it's important in
> 
> a sense. I too am interested in having medical breakthroughs, freedom
> 
> from labour and all the nice things that AI can bring.

It's important even if you're only interested in philosophical problems,
such as why did Evolution bother to make conscious animals at all.  

>
>
> > 
> I don't quite understand why an omnipotent being
> 
>  would "want" anything, He should already have it.  Nevertheless the
> 
>  religious say God does want certain things and they know exactly precisely
> 
>  what they are and they insist on telling us about it; and they also insist
> 
> God can't get what He wants on His own, we have to help the poor fellow
> 
>  achieve His aims.
>
> > 
> You are describing Abrahamic religions. I don't believe in them either.
>

I don't think the
 Hindu religion
 is significantly less stupid. There are some forms of Buddhism and
Taoism that aren't stupid but they aren't religions, they don't say
anything about God, don't say faith is a virtue, and don't even claim they
are revealing something new about the world, instead they are doing
something much more modest, they are giving personal advice; they are
saying this is a way to be happy. Not the only way, maybe not the best way,
just a way.

>
> I think you are not interested in what Bruno has to say. There's
> nothing wrong with that, but it's just a personal preference of yours.
>

Well yes, but how could not being interested in something not be a personal
preference.

John K Clark

>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-15 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 8:11 PM, John Clark  wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 10:26 PM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
>> >
>> If we look back in scientific history, there always seems to be
>> something fundamental that humanity is blind to. The real scale of the
>> universe in space and time, the non-specialness of our solar system,
>> evolution, the big bang, also relativity, quantum mechanics, etc.
>> I find it a bit too convenient to believe that this trend stopped
>> here. That we now have it all mostly figured out, precisely at our
>> moment in history.
>
>
> Who claims we have? As of today we have no idea what 96% of the universe is
> made of,
>
> Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries.

As far as I can tell, what we have is a falsification of current
theories. They appear to be good enough approximations for many
things, but then they fail at predicting the expansion rate of the
universe right? Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's something else, how
do we know?

>> Especially when there are huge mysteries remaining,
>> notably "what is consciousness?".
>
>
> I don't consider the study of consciousness to be very fruitful, it's
> produced nothing worthwhile for centuries and I see no reason why that is
> going to change.

If science failed so far at explaining something, then it doesn't
matter? I believe the exact opposite.

> The study of intelligence, now that's important!

That is a statement of faith. Gizmo worshiping. Yes, it's important in
a sense. I too am interested in having medical breakthroughs, freedom
from labour and all the nice things that AI can bring. But in the end
I am going to die (at least my current monkey will), and my experience
here as a monkey being is the most real and important thing I have.

>> I am not asking you to accept anything harder to believe than that
>> there are fundamental things that we do not know.
>
>
> Only a fool would disagree with that, but it's religious believers who claim
> to have all the answers.

And other religious believers ignore certain aspects of reality, even
the most fundamentally undeniable ones.

> I don't quite understand why an omnipotent being
> would "want" anything, He should already have it.  Nevertheless the
> religious say God does want certain things and they know exactly precisely
> what they are and they insist on telling us about it; and they also insist
> God can't get what He wants on His own, we have to help the poor fellow
> achieve His aims.

You are describing Abrahamic religions. I don't believe in them either.

>
>> >
>> This is the problem I have with militant atheists:
>
>
> It can't be much of a problem because militant atheists are so rare. In the
> USA there are 535 members of congress, most members of that body are
> militant christians but not one of them is a militant atheist, although
> before 2012 there was one apologetic atheist.

There are many impressive things about the USA, but in certain ways it
still has to catch up with the rest of the western world. Christian
puritanism is unusually strong in your culture, and I agree that that
is a big problem.

>> >
>> their inability to
>> consider certain ideas
>
>
> I've certainly considered it, I've had 13 years of formal religious
> instruction, kindergarten through High School, more than enough I think to
> be entitled to form an opinion on the subject.
>
>>
>> >
>> without trying to fit the opponent into a box
>
>
> And I feel confident in putting Christian and Islamic theology into the
> imbecile box,

Me too.

> and Bruno's
>  invisible amoral mindless metaphorical form of arithmetic
> into the silly box. I can't prove God doesn't exist but I can prove God is
> silly.

I think you are not interested in what Bruno has to say. There's
nothing wrong with that, but it's just a personal preference of yours.

Telmo.

> John K Clark
>
>>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-13 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 10 Feb 2017, at 20:37, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 12:01 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

> The meaning of words in the natural language is defined by  
usage,

Yes.

> not in science,

Not so. Scientific language like any language changes over time.  
Today the meaning of the word "vacuum" isn't the same as it was a  
century ago and the same is true of "nothing". Even the word  
"scientist" was only invented in 1835, before that they were called  
"Natural Philosophers" which I think was rather charming.

> I have made clear at the start that I use "theology" in a  
large sense

It is the original sense, and a millennium of use has given rise to  
the modern science.

Too large, much too large! You use it in such a large sense that  
the word becomes utterly useless. You've in effect exchanged the  
word "God" for "stuff"

For "reality". usually "stuff", or substance, or Matter, is the God  
which has been proved to definitely not being able to exist or to make  
sense once we assume Digital Mechanism in cognitive science. But yes,  
"stuff" is *a* God, known by comparative theologian as the second God  
of Aristotle. None of Aristotle God makes sense with Digital Mechanism.

because you know nobody can say "I don't believe in stuff".

Lol.

Bruno

John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-11 Thread PGC

On Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 12:59:48 PM UTC+1, Alberto G.Corona wrote:
>
> Lol. There is no way to avoid the absolute since nothing can be based on 
> nothing,. 
>
> In this case you reify nothing, which is purely negative, as absence of 
> anything,, and convert it to "something". And this something that you 
> implicitly postulate is an absolute ethical principle of humility, which 
> becomes your highest value with which measure everyone else so it becomes a 
> criteria for absolute ranking.
>
> It is obvious that this humility is not humble although it is not arrogant 
> of course. 
>

I'd disagree and call it the arrogance of cowardice. But on the ranking 
idea, i.e. weaponizing ignorance as a rhetorical strategy to enforce the 
semblance of absolute ranking, you're correct. Telmo has completely adopted 
Bruno's resignation towards the scientific world, which you can see in the 
paper he posted. On one level this place is all talk, but some folks run 
into danger of believing it and taking it literally, even to the extent 
that they advocate things purely because of Bruno's compulsive posting 
without even reading the papers and work he refers to and making up their 
own minds. Scientific discussion on this list? Something is rotten in the 
state of Denmark and it does stink of the same unreflected, uncritical 
faith in the guru, that Bruno warns about constantly.

> That kind of humility can be summarized in this phrase refering to false 
> humble christians: "The progressive Christian know that he is better than 
> others because he believe that he is not better than others".  
>
> Why we do not admit that everyone need to feel in a better path than 
> others? I do. I'ts human.It is the reason why We do things. If not, we 
> would be completely redundant.
>

I made the point that there is some liberty for a mystic to self-indulge in 
face of the local modesty inquisition of our zealous agnostics of the last 
weeks. But not so much that you write novels to reply to every post. That's 
defensive, as if a thousand explanations hold the castle of obfuscation 
together. US President uses the same rhetorical strategy: exhaust people by 
forcing discourse on them and relying on their faithfulness to check facts 
in discussions he frames, instead of acting in accordance with their 
personal identity.  

>
> Concerning the adequacy of the agnostic stanpoint for acquiring knowledge 
> and, in general, for life, I have to say that it is not very good. At least 
> the atheists have  firm beliefs, which are a ground upon which they develop 
> a program for action (with disastrous consequences, by the way)  But in the 
> meantime they have been very active in achieving things. At least in the 
> euphoric phase of his bipolar syndrome. But agnostics have no plan, so, as 
> Aristotle said, reason without passion does move nothing, so agnostics... 
> are moved to very few achievements, they follow with mild critics and 
> disdain what is dominant.
>

Sure, and I'll add the move of them selling the lack of achievement or 
dreams/goals as the virtue of laziness. But this form of laziness is not 
the kind of laziness of a beautiful proof or musical line: it is the 
laziness of a coward who is wrong/naive in terms of interpersonal violence: 
always walking away from confrontation is not a virtue, as little as always 
engaging it is. There are points where politicians, managers, conflict 
mediators of all kinds recognize that they have to assert force to stop a 
trigger from being pulled, a larger harm from manifesting itself when harm 
was already done. 

Unchecked violence is often worse than the original grievance finding 
singular expression, as it will multiply the violence. Shit exponentializes 
shit, and the agnostic running away lets the very animal fear dictate their 
action that they condemn. Particularly where engagement is low risk, e.g. 
no guns or deadly force involved as in more acute conflict situations on 
the streets or in war zones. That's where such ignorance based ontologies 
fall short: not because of some obvious reasoning error, but because at 
certain times, force can be used to trade a smaller harm for the 
devastating kinds of larger harms. It is related to the kind of force 
required to negate pride, but agnostics are as proud of their 
wisdom/name/rank as anybody. 

And since computers' command of language is becoming more effective, 
studying violence/power and say successful linguistic mediation and 
intervention is another fascinating, inspiring aspect of psychology that 
would fit AI discussions on this list. And I don't care if the machines are 
made in Platonia or by Intel, but there is more advanced theology and the 
struggle with the problem of evil, and its study, advancing on our streets 
and war zones, than in hair split central of the internet that loses itself 
in low risk pettiness and infinite advertising of infinite insecurity, the 
false petty battles suck in our

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-10 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 12:01 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> 
> The meaning of words in the natural language is defined by usage,

Yes.

> > 
> not in science,

Not so. Scientific language like any language changes over time. Today the
meaning of the word "vacuum" isn't the same as it was a century ago and
the same is true of "nothing". Even the word "scientist" was only invented
in 1835, before that they were called "Natural Philosophers" which I think
was rather charming.

> > 
> I have made clear at the start that I use "theology" in a large sense

Too large, much too large! You use it in such a large sense that the word
becomes utterly useless. You've in effect exchanged the word "God" for
"stuff" because you know nobody can say "I don't believe
in stuff".

John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-10 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 10:26 PM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

> 
> If we look back in scientific history, there always seems to be
>  
> something fundamental that humanity is blind to. The real scale of the
>  
> universe in space and time, the non-specialness of our solar system,
>  
> evolution, the big bang, also relativity, quantum mechanics, etc.
>  
> I find it a bit too convenient to believe that this trend stopped
>  
> here. That we now have it all mostly figured out, precisely at our
>  
> moment in history.

Who claims we have? As of today we have no idea what 96% of the universe
is made of,

Dark Matter and Dark Energy remain complete mysteries. 

> > 
> Especially when there are huge mysteries remaining,
>  
> notably "what is consciousness?".
>

I don't consider the study of consciousness to be very fruitful, it's
produced nothing worthwhile for centuries and I see no reason why that is
going to change. The study of intelligence, now that's important!

>
> 
> I am not asking you to accept anything harder to believe than that
>  
> there are fundamental things that we do not know.

Only a fool would disagree with that, but it's religious believers who
claim to have all the answers. I don't quite understand why an omnipotent
being would "want" anything, He should already have it.  Nevertheless the
religious say God does want certain things and they know exactly precisely
what they are and they insist on telling us about it; and they also insist
God can't get what He wants on His own, we have to help the poor fellow
achieve His aims.

>
> 
> This is the problem I have with militant atheists:

It can't be much of a problem because militant atheists are so rare. In
the USA there are 535 members of congress, most members of that body are
militant christians but not one of them is a militant atheist, although
before 2012 there was one apologetic atheist.

> 
> their inability to
>  
> consider certain ideas

I've certainly considered it, I've had 13 years of formal religious
instruction, kindergarten through High School, more than enough I think to
be entitled to form an opinion on the subject.

> > 
> without trying to fit the opponent into a box
>

And I feel confident in putting Christian and Islamic theology into the
imbecile box, and Bruno's 
 invisible amoral mindless metaphorical form of arithmetic
 into the silly box. I can't prove God doesn't exist but I can prove God
is silly.

John K Clark

>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-10 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 09 Feb 2017, at 19:15, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/9/2017 6:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Many religious people believe that the idea that God cares more  
on humans than on spiders (say) is just utter arrogance, vanity,  
and delusional.


"Many"?  That's the fallacy of the dangling comparison.  Many  
compared to what?  Not compared to the number who believe the  
contrary.


Read Aldous Huxley, or read the Platonists (before and after JC),  
or read the texts of the mystics.


Then, also, science is not a question of the number of people  
believing this or that.


But the meaning of words is defined by usage - and in usage numbers  
count.


The meaning of words in the natural language is defined by usage, not  
in science, where the local meaning of words is given in the textbooks  
of the field concerned. here I have made clear at the start that I use  
"theology" in a large sense (the original greek one) specialized  
through the mechanist "faith" (the idea of surviving a form of digital  
physical reincarnation/reimplementation).


When I did NOT use the term "theology" when explaining  
computationalism 35 years ago, the attack was simply "that is  
theology", and well, they meant only "that is hypothetical", but with  
a pejorative tone.


It is perhaps the simpler way to get this: computationalism requires  
some act of faith, toward its plausibility, toward the choice of level  
in case we apply it in practice, toward the competence of the possible  
doctors. Transhumanists usually are computationalists. But then the  
theory shows that they might take a detour, and why not, it is open  
today if life itself is not a sort of detour: that are complex  
questions only on the verge to be formulated.


Then, with your number, you forget that the usage of most theological  
term continue to have their platonist and aristotelian meaning in the  
theological treatise (the good one as well as the bad one). The three  
religions have kept their relations with platonism, notably the non  
nameable (non 3p representability of God), which fits well with the  
fact that machine cannot name too "big" predicate, like "true(p)".


It is up to the (weak) materialist to explain what *is* the primary  
matter, and how it can interfere with the computations. If not, your  
seemingly critical point look like an evocation of a god for hiding a  
problem under the rug (a tradition since the institutionalization and  
violent enforcement of pseudo-religions).


Bruno






Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-09 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 8:11 PM, John Clark  wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 2:34 AM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
>
>>> > Does the agnostic or the atheist have
>>> t
>>> he correct scientific
>>> stance regarding a teapot in orbit around Uranus? I like what the great
>>> Isaac Asimov
>>> had to say on the subject:
>>
>>
>> >
>> Both have a healthy tendency to estimate probabilities. This prevents
>> them from wasting time but also get killed, etc.
>> Sometimes the estimates are wrong, of course.
>
>
> How can one be certain of anything, what does "certain" even mean? Euclid
> proved 2500 years ago that there is no such thing as the largest prime
> number, his proof makes perfect sense to me but maybe the proof contains a
> flaw somewhere that I and everybody else has overlooked for the last 2500
> years.
>
> Well maybe, but I judge the probability of it containing a flaw to be so low
> that it would not be worth my time looking for it because there are plenty
> of far more interesting things to do and the time spent looking for a flaw
> in Euclid's proof is time not spent doing something else. So "being certain"
> is a emotional state not a logical one, it marks the point where you judge a
> train of thought should stop and the point where you judge it's time to move
> on to something new. Yes your judgement could be wrong, but if you're smart
> it probably isn't.

I don't disagree.

If we look back in scientific history, there always seems to be
something fundamental that humanity is blind to. The real scale of the
universe in space and time, the non-specialness of our solar system,
evolution, the big bang, also relativity, quantum mechanics, etc.

I find it a bit too convenient to believe that this trend stopped
here. That we now have it all mostly figured out, precisely at our
moment in history. Especially when there are huge mysteries remaining,
notably "what is consciousness?".

The scientific stance is to do the best with what we have, as you say,
and also admit that there is an epistemic horizon, as there always
was.

>> This happens a lot in
>> science. If you have a good idea that is sufficiently new or unknown,
>
>
> Most new ideas in science turn out to be dead wrong, especially if they're
> BIG new ideas, that's why scientific revolutions don't happen every day.
> People like Newton Darwin and Einstein are rare.

Agreed.

>> The difference between god and a tea pot is that the tea pot is
>> well-defined.
>
>
> Good point. I am certain there is not a teapot in orbit around Uranus, but I
> judge there very well could be an
> invisible amoral mindless
> formless
> metaphorical
> blob of some sort in orbit around that planet.

I am not asking you to accept anything harder to believe than that
there are fundamental things that we do not know. This is all I am
saying.

This is the problem I have with militant atheists: their inability to
consider certain ideas without trying to fit the opponent into a box
that they know how to attack. One points out epistemological limits,
and it is the same as if one were wearing wizard suits and casting
spells from bronze-age silly books.

Telmo.

>   John K Clark
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-09 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 2:34 AM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

>
> Does the agnostic or the atheist have
>>  t
>> he correct scientific
>>  
>> stance regarding a teapot in orbit around Uranus? I like what the great
>>  
>> Isaac Asimov
>>  
>> had to say on the subject:
>
>
> > 
> Both have a healthy tendency to estimate probabilities. This prevents
>  
> them from wasting time but also get killed, etc.
>  
> Sometimes the estimates are wrong, of course.

How can one be certain of anything, what does "certain" even mean? Euclid
proved 2500 years ago that there is no such thing as the largest prime
number, his proof makes perfect sense to me but maybe the proof contains a
flaw somewhere that I and everybody else has overlooked for the last 2500
years.

 Well maybe, but I judge the probability of it containing a flaw to be so
low that it would not be worth my time looking for it because there are
plenty of far more interesting things to do and the time spent looking for
a flaw in Euclid's proof is time not spent doing something else. So "being
certain" is a emotional state not a logical one, it marks the point where
you judge a train of thought should stop and the point where you judge it's
time to move on to something new. Yes your judgement could be wrong, but if
you're smart it probably isn't.

> > 
> This happens a lot in
>  
> science. If you have a good idea that is sufficiently new or unknown,
>

Most new ideas in science turn out to be dead wrong, especially if they're
BIG new ideas, that's why scientific revolutions don't happen every day.
People like Newton Darwin and Einstein are rare. 

> > 
> The difference between god and a tea pot is that the tea pot is
> well-defined.
>

Good point. I am certain there is not a teapot in orbit around Uranus, but
I judge there very well could be an
invisible amoral mindless
formless 
metaphorical
blob of some sort in orbit around that planet.

  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-09 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/9/2017 6:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Many religious people believe that the idea that God cares more on 
humans than on spiders (say) is just utter arrogance, vanity, and 
delusional.


"Many"?  That's the fallacy of the dangling comparison.  Many 
compared to what?  Not compared to the number who believe the contrary.


Read Aldous Huxley, or read the Platonists (before and after JC), or 
read the texts of the mystics.


Then, also, science is not a question of the number of people 
believing this or that.


But the meaning of words is defined by usage - and in usage numbers count.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-09 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Feb 2017, at 20:15, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/8/2017 9:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 08 Feb 2017, at 04:53, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/7/2017 9:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Which is exactly why I'm explicit in defining what the theism is  
that I consider preposterous and what other god ideas I'm merely  
agnostic about.  Then Bruno criticizes me for "supporting" the  
former; rather than help him muddy the meaning of "God" so he  
can call the truths of arithmetic "God".


Let us try to agree on some definition of God. Most people, after  
and before Christ agrees on this: it is the origin of everything,  
it is what everything proceeds of, unnameable and transcendent,  
that is beyond us.


Are you OK, with it. Don't hesitate to improve it.


No, I'm not "OK" with it because it is a misleading appropriation  
of a common word that is used to denote a superpowerful and  
knowledgable person who not only created everything, but cares  
about human beings and demands certain conduct and who acts in the  
world in response to prayer.  Your definition doesn't even rise to  
the level of a deist god.  Even a deist god is supposed to care  
about human conduct.







The definition I gave is more general, and let such question open.  
All atheists, christians and muslims I met do agree that their God  
satisfy my definition.


So what?  The Big Bang also satisfies your definition - which means  
it's not at all definite.


That is exactly the point. yes, the physical primary cosmos, and a big- 
bang conceived as an origin of all are god(s), and are based on  
Aristotelian religion. Then, it violates mechanism, so those are  
consistent religion with some string form of non-mechanist hypothesis.  
But there are no evidences that such things are god, and all evidences  
for mechanism are evidence against that idea.







Why adding the controversial attribute?


I don't "add" them.  They are part of the meaning of "God" as used  
by Christians, Muslims, Jews, and some other sects.


Things are much more nuanced than that. The three religions have many  
different internal school of thought, including some neoplatonist one.  
They are not numerous only because at some point they have been  
exploited by terrestrial power, which is a blasphem from the point of  
view of genuine spiritual inquirer. That happens to any science when  
exploited by special interests.





Even the Greeks always meant a person by "god".


This is completely wrong. The question of the personhood of the outer  
God or the One is on the contrary a topic of many discussions and  
chapters in the neoplatonist literature. It is perhaps the reason of  
the notion of "inner god", which is a person-aspect of the outer god.  
The outer god itself is more akin to the eastern Tao, which is  
conceived as having so will, nor thought.
Don't confuse the greek legend with the greek theology, which is a  
science, and ask no act of faith. Only definition and reflexion, and  
observation.







We are already know that atheists do not believe in those  
attribute, and I am agnostic on it.


You're agnostic about Yaweh and Zeus?  Have you adopted radical  
agnosticism like Telmo?


In science, we do not commit oneself in any ontological commitment.  
And we keep our religious beliefs, if any, for oneself, even in the  
theological field (I would say: especially with the theological field).







When we do science, we search the axioms on which more people agree  
and then do the reasoning and see where we are driven. Why use a so  
peculiar special theory, given that almost nobody in this list  
agrees such a god does not exists,


Because this list is a very tiny sample of world population.


I have never met a christian who believes in the literal bible. Most  
abramanic theologian are aware of platonism and open to the idea that  
science might add evidence for the platonist theology. Note also that  
the three abramanic religion are already closer to Plato than the  
materialist religion.





When people tell me that they are communists or Christians or  
vegetarians and I ask them what they mean by that - I take them at  
their word.  Christians and Muslims and Jews all say that they  
believe in God who is an immortal powerful supernatural PERSON who  
created everything and who cares very much about how people behave  
(especially with their clothes off).  So who am I (or you) to say  
that's not what "God" means.



But the scientific attitude has been forbidden for them, and here we  
do science, because we are lucky to live in a quasi free-world. It is  
just astounding than you defend the pseudo-theories of those who have  
banished or burned at the stake all the reasoners and skepticals in  
the field since Justinian. Why do the atheists defend so much the  
theology of the charlatans? In science, we *never* use any word in  
their common popular sense.









or even that, if it exists, we do not yet have evidences for

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-09 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Feb 2017, at 05:05, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/7/2017 10:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

This world.  The one I can interact with.



Ah! You mean this dream. yes, it looks we can share part of it, and  
interact with many users, like in second life. But to believe there  
is a primary world behind this requires an act of faith, and  
eventually, even if true in any sensible sense, if computationalism  
is true, we cannot use that faith, we have to reduce its appearance  
from a much small act of faith, like in the faith that x + 0 = x, x  
+ successor(y) = successor(x + y), ...


It's hilarious that you think being awake is a dream


Not at all. With computationalism there is a crucial distinction  
between being awake and being sleepy/dreaming. When you dream, or when  
you are in a normal simulation (made by our descendent or something),  
we have only one computation below the substitution level. When you  
are awake, you have an infinity of computations below your  
substitution level. That is why the apperaning of quantumness is a  
strong evidence that we are awake indeed. We are not in one dream, but  
in an infiniy of them. This is already explained at the step seven.








and an hypotheis based on evidence is faith.


Yes, you need faith in some reality to interpret evidences as being  
evidences on something. You might just confuse faith with "blind  
faith", which is nothing different from an act of obedience to some  
pseudo-authority.







 I think you're stuck in 1984.


?




 I once noted that 10^120 + 1 = 10^120.



?

Bruno





Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-08 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/8/2017 9:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 08 Feb 2017, at 04:53, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/7/2017 9:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Which is exactly why I'm explicit in defining what the theism is 
that I consider preposterous and what other god ideas I'm merely 
agnostic about.  Then Bruno criticizes me for "supporting" the 
former; rather than help him muddy the meaning of "God" so he can 
call the truths of arithmetic "God".


Let us try to agree on some definition of God. Most people, after 
and before Christ agrees on this: it is the origin of everything, it 
is what everything proceeds of, unnameable and transcendent, that is 
beyond us.


Are you OK, with it. Don't hesitate to improve it. 


No, I'm not "OK" with it because it is a misleading appropriation of 
a common word that is used to denote /*a superpowerful and 
knowledgable person*/ who not only created everything, but /*cares 
about human beings*/ and /*demands certain conduct*/ and /*who acts 
in the world */in response to prayer.  Your definition doesn't even 
rise to the level of a deist god. Even a deist god is supposed to 
care about human conduct.







The definition I gave is more general, and let such question open. All 
atheists, christians and muslims I met do agree that their God satisfy 
my definition.


So what?  The Big Bang also satisfies your definition - which means it's 
not at all definite.



Why adding the controversial attribute?


I don't "add" them.  They are part of the meaning of "God" as used by 
Christians, Muslims, Jews, and some other sects.  Even the Greeks always 
meant a person by "god".


We are already know that atheists do not believe in those attribute, 
and I am agnostic on it.


You're agnostic about Yaweh and Zeus?  Have you adopted radical 
agnosticism like Telmo?


When we do science, we search the axioms on which more people agree 
and then do the reasoning and see where we are driven. Why use a so 
peculiar special theory, given that almost nobody in this list agrees 
such a god does not exists,


Because this list is a very tiny sample of world population.  When 
people tell me that they are communists or Christians or vegetarians and 
I ask them what they mean by that - I take them at their word. 
Christians and Muslims and Jews all say that they believe in God who is 
an immortal powerful supernatural PERSON who created everything and who 
cares very much about how people behave (especially with their clothes 
off).  So who am I (or you) to say that's not what "God" means.


or even that, if it exists, we do not yet have evidences for it? Just 
to say I don't believe in it? This is completely weird. You could as 
well say that science has guven evidence that Earth does not exist, by 
making earth flat by definition. This is not how science works. Why 
insisting that we use the notion of God which has been imposed to it 
by terror and violence for a very long time? You are completely 
illustrating what Einstein said on the atheists and "free-thinker"(*): 
they are completely unable to leave the religion they hate so much, up 
to the point of hating even more the religion which use different 
notion of God, like the original scientific one of the greeks and 
Indians (and chinese ...).
Many religious people believe that the idea that God cares more on 
humans than on spiders (say) is just utter arrogance, vanity, and 
delusional.


"Many"?  That's the fallacy of the dangling comparison.  Many compared 
to what?  Not compared to the number who believe the contrary.


No one serious would postulate that, even if some will continue to 
hope it, but there are no evidences at all, so let us be agnostic, and 
not put this in the definition.


You have a fetish to avoid putting anything in the definition that would 
rule out using the word "God", even though your meaning is quite 
different from 99% of the people in the world who use the word.


Brent
“People are more unwilling to give up the word ‘God’ than to give up the 
idea for which the word has hitherto stood”

--- Bertrand Russell

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-08 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Feb 2017, at 04:53, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/7/2017 9:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Which is exactly why I'm explicit in defining what the theism is  
that I consider preposterous and what other god ideas I'm merely  
agnostic about.  Then Bruno criticizes me for "supporting" the  
former; rather than help him muddy the meaning of "God" so he can  
call the truths of arithmetic "God".


Let us try to agree on some definition of God. Most people, after  
and before Christ agrees on this: it is the origin of everything,  
it is what everything proceeds of, unnameable and transcendent,  
that is beyond us.


Are you OK, with it. Don't hesitate to improve it.


No, I'm not "OK" with it because it is a misleading appropriation of  
a common word that is used to denote a superpowerful and  
knowledgable person who not only created everything, but cares about  
human beings and demands certain conduct and who acts in the world  
in response to prayer.  Your definition doesn't even rise to the  
level of a deist god.  Even a deist god is supposed to care about  
human conduct.







The definition I gave is more general, and let such question open. All  
atheists, christians and muslims I met do agree that their God satisfy  
my definition. Why adding the controversial attribute? We are already  
know that atheists do not believe in those attribute, and I am  
agnostic on it. When we do science, we search the axioms on which more  
people agree and then do the reasoning and see where we are driven.  
Why use a so peculiar special theory, given that almost nobody in this  
list agrees such a god does not exists, or even that, if it exists, we  
do not yet have evidences for it? Just to say I don't believe in it?  
This is completely weird. You could as well say that science has guven  
evidence that Earth does not exist, by making earth flat by  
definition. This is not how science works. Why insisting that we use  
the notion of God which has been imposed to it by terror and violence  
for a very long time? You are completely illustrating what Einstein  
said on the atheists and "free-thinker"(*): they are completely unable  
to leave the religion they hate so much, up to the point of hating  
even more the religion which use different notion of God, like the  
original scientific one of the greeks and Indians (and chinese ...).
Many religious people believe that the idea that God cares more on  
humans than on spiders (say) is just utter arrogance, vanity, and  
delusional. No one serious would postulate that, even if some will  
continue to hope it, but there are no evidences at all, so let us be  
agnostic, and not put this in the definition.


Bruno

(*) I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food  
guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who  
profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose  
intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious  
fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are  
still feeling the weight of their chain which they have thrown off  
after hard struggle. They are creatures who---in their grudge against  
the traditional "opium for people"---cannot bear the music of the  
spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one  
cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and humans aims.

(Einstein, See the book by Jammer on "Einstein and Religion", page 97).






Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-08 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Feb 2017, at 04:02, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/7/2017 2:16 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Yes.  The relation of mathematics to facts in the world is one of
description.  That a dx/dt = -x has a decaying exponential as a  
solution is
not a fact about the world.  As any engineer will tell you, it  
means that if
the differential equation is a good description of something about  
the world
then the decaying exponential will be a good description of  
something about
the world.  The analogy with Godel's theorem is that if we create  
an AI
system to prove theorems, no matter how fast or long it runs it  
will not be

able to prove all true theorems.
And, importantly, it will not be able to prove its own consistency.  
If

we are machines ourselves, this also applies to us, right?


One cannot prove his own consistency as a formal axiomatic inference  
machines - but very little of our reasoning is in that form.  Even  
that which is in that form may not rely on axioms of infinity.   
Finite mathematics can certainly be consistent - every computer  
implements it.   And nothing precludes someone else from proving  
your consistency.



No problem with this. Notice that the scheme of TOEs I gave does not  
mention any theory having the axiom of infinity. Mechanism is a  
finitist theory. Judson Web wrote a very nice book on this.


Now, incompleteness applies on any machine reasoning about itself  
correctly (no matter how they reason), and we limit ourselves to such  
machine, which is all we need to extract physics from the sum of their  
"dreams" which exists in arithmetic (by Church-Thesis and "yes  
doctor", although we could use the weaker strong AI thesis, here).


It is the believer in Matter which have to explain how Matter  
interfere with the computation so as making the immaterial machine non  
conscious. Just invoking MATTER is not valid. We can always add a God  
to make any theory wrong, which is typically what the creationist are  
doing. Scientists prefer to use Occam instead, especially if that  
provides a testable theory, like with Mechanism.


Bruno





Brent


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-08 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 07 Feb 2017, at 12:59, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Lol. There is no way to avoid the absolute since nothing can be  
based on nothing,.

In this case you reify nothing, which is purely negative, as absence  
of anything,, and convert it to "something". And this something that  
you implicitly postulate is an absolute ethical principle of  
humility, which becomes your highest value with which measure  
everyone else so it becomes a criteria for absolute ranking.

It is obvious that this humility is not humble although it is not  
arrogant of course. That kind of humility can be summarized in this  
phrase refering to false humble christians: "The progressive  
Christian know that he is better than others because he believe that  
he is not better than others".

Why we do not admit that everyone need to feel in a better path than  
others? I do. I'ts human.It is the reason why We do things. If not,  
we would be completely redundant.

I can follow you on this.

Concerning the adequacy of the agnostic stanpoint for acquiring  
knowledge and, in general, for life, I have to say that it is not  
very good. At least the atheists have  firm beliefs, which are a  
ground upon which they develop a program for action (with disastrous  
consequences, by the way)  But in the meantime they have been very  
active in achieving things. At least in the euphoric phase of his  
bipolar syndrome. But agnostics have no plan, so, as Aristotle said,  
reason without passion does move nothing, so agnostics... are moved  
to very few achievements, they follow with mild critics and disdain  
what is dominant.

Since atheists allows agnostic in their rank, I distinguish two types  
of atheists: the gnostic one, and the agnostic one. The gnostic have  
firm belief indeed: they believe:

1) in Primary Matter (often called Aristotle's second God, which is  
actually its main belief/metaphysical-assumption).

2) in the same conception of God than the christian-jews-muslims (the  
abrahamic god), even if it is used just to claim they don't believe in  
it (but they seems to ignore the many treatise in theology of the  
neoplatonist, like Proclus' treatise entitled "theology").

I am not sure that agnostic have no plan. There are many different  
reasons to be agnostic. We can be agnostic on something because we are  
searching more information before trying to conclude on some definite  
belief, like we can be agnostic by lack of interest, or lack of good  
definition, or just methodologically, to avoid building an answer  
before the question is clarified. The scientific attitude is agnostic  
by construction, both on the God = Primary Matter and the personal  
god, or some non personal God, like TAO or MATTER/FIELDS/TIME. We  
present our temporary beliefs in the form of theory/axioms/postulate  
and search the consequences, hoping to find empirically (or logically)  
refutable one, so that we can improve or change the theory. In this  
way, we can learn something.

Bruno

2017-02-06 14:46 GMT+01:00 PGC :

On Monday, February 6, 2017 at 11:39:35 AM UTC+1, telmo_menezes wrote:
On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Brent Meeker   
wrote:

>
>
> And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of  
fascism?...or

> communism?

Yes, I reject simplistic views of History where one side is 100% good
and the other 100% evil. Absolute belief leads to terrible ideas, such
as trying to bomb countries into democracy.

That goes for converting folks to humility and agnosticism too,  
which basically implies "humility/agnosticism in terms of my fuzzily  
defined reality bubble". That's both simplistic and unclear. PGC

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Alberto.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-08 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Alberto G. Corona  wrote:
> Lol. There is no way to avoid the absolute since nothing can be based on
> nothing,.

There is a difference between "the absolute" and "absolute belief". I
believe in an ultimate reality, but I am not sure we can see it from
our vantage point -- and this "not being sure" is an agnostic
position, of course.

> In this case you reify nothing, which is purely negative, as absence of
> anything,, and convert it to "something". And this something that you
> implicitly postulate is an absolute ethical principle of humility, which
> becomes your highest value with which measure everyone else so it becomes a
> criteria for absolute ranking.

?
I did not say it was an absolute ethical principle. I just said that
it is the scientific attitude.
Ethics is a hard topic...

> It is obvious that this humility is not humble although it is not arrogant
> of course. That kind of humility can be summarized in this phrase refering
> to false humble christians: "The progressive Christian know that he is
> better than others because he believe that he is not better than others".

In short, you are accusing me of virtual signalling. Maybe... I am
human and we do that a lot.
I mean "Intelectual humility" as an epistemological stance, not in the
sense that hollywood celebrities use it: "I'm sooo humbled by this
oscar!".

> Why we do not admit that everyone need to feel in a better path than others?
> I do. I'ts human.It is the reason why We do things. If not, we would be
> completely redundant.

Redundant in relation to what? What is the goal?

> Concerning the adequacy of the agnostic stanpoint for acquiring knowledge
> and, in general, for life, I have to say that it is not very good. At least
> the atheists have  firm beliefs, which are a ground upon which they develop
> a program for action (with disastrous consequences, by the way)  But in the
> meantime they have been very active in achieving things. At least in the
> euphoric phase of his bipolar syndrome. But agnostics have no plan, so, as
> Aristotle said, reason without passion does move nothing, so agnostics...
> are moved to very few achievements, they follow with mild critics and
> disdain what is dominant.

Agnostic = do not pretend to know things you do not know

What do you mean by achieving things? Can one achieve things by
writing a book, or a piece of music, or a scientific paper, or a
computer program? Or does it have to be something that forces others
to live in a way that you find more acceptable?

Telmo.

> 2017-02-06 14:46 GMT+01:00 PGC :
>>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, February 6, 2017 at 11:39:35 AM UTC+1, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of
>>> > fascism?...or
>>> > communism?
>>>
>>> Yes, I reject simplistic views of History where one side is 100% good
>>> and the other 100% evil. Absolute belief leads to terrible ideas, such
>>> as trying to bomb countries into democracy.
>>>
>>
>> That goes for converting folks to humility and agnosticism too, which
>> basically implies "humility/agnosticism in terms of my fuzzily defined
>> reality bubble". That's both simplistic and unclear. PGC
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Alberto.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 4:25 AM, John Clark  wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 12:32 PM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
>
>> >
>> I would say that, under these definitions, the correct scientific
>> s
>> tance is to be agnostic.
>
>
> Does the agnostic or the atheist have
> the correct scientific
>
> stance regarding a teapot in orbit around Uranus? I like what the great
> Isaac Asimov
> had to say on the subject:

Both have a healthy tendency to estimate probabilities. This prevents
them from wasting time but also get killed, etc.
Sometimes the estimates are wrong, of course. This happens a lot in
science. If you have a good idea that is sufficiently new or unknown,
people are going to say you're crazy. Of course, you can also really
be crazy.

The difference between god and a tea pot is that the tea pot is well-defined.

Telmo.

> "
> I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist.
> I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly
> suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
> "
>
> John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> In this mailing list, we have seen hypothesis about such a mind that
>> do not require man-in-the-sky, creationism or other absurdities, nor
>> conflict with current scientific models. Are they correct? I don't
>> know, so...
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>> > Brent
>> >
>> >
>> > On 1/30/2017 2:26 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I hope all atheists and all religious people with all of their silly
>> >> certainties convert to intelectual humility and agnosticism.
>> >> Then maybe we have a chance of transcending this silly monkey-stage
>> >> where we seem to be stuck at.
>> >>
>> >> Cheers
>> >> Telmo.
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 4:44 AM, Samiya Illias 
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> These videos might be of interest to some (the first one is by a Math
>> >>> professor):
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> https://www.quora.com/What-reasons-have-made-an-atheist-convert-to-Islam/answer/Shau-Sumar?srid=s5B1=215c99a7
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> Samiya
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> >>> Groups
>> >>> "Everything List" group.
>> >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>> >>> an
>> >>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> >>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> > Groups
>> > "Everything List" group.
>> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>> > an
>> > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/7/2017 10:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

This world.  The one I can interact with.



Ah! You mean this dream. yes, it looks we can share part of it, and 
interact with many users, like in second life. But to believe there is 
a primary world behind this requires an act of faith, and eventually, 
even if true in any sensible sense, if computationalism is true, we 
cannot use that faith, we have to reduce its appearance from a much 
small act of faith, like in the faith that x + 0 = x, x + successor(y) 
= successor(x + y), ...


It's hilarious that you think being awake is a dream and an hypotheis 
based on evidence is faith.  I think you're stuck in 1984.  I once noted 
that 10^120 + 1 = 10^120.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/7/2017 9:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Which is exactly why I'm explicit in defining what the theism is that 
I consider preposterous and what other god ideas I'm merely agnostic 
about.  Then Bruno criticizes me for "supporting" the former; rather 
than help him muddy the meaning of "God" so he can call the truths of 
arithmetic "God".


Let us try to agree on some definition of God. Most people, after and 
before Christ agrees on this: it is the origin of everything, it is 
what everything proceeds of, unnameable and transcendent, that is 
beyond us.


Are you OK, with it. Don't hesitate to improve it. 


No, I'm not "OK" with it because it is a misleading appropriation of a 
common word that is used to denote /*a superpowerful and knowledgable 
person*/ who not only created everything, but /*cares about human 
beings*/ and /*demands certain conduct*/ and /*who acts in the world 
*/in response to prayer.  Your definition doesn't even rise to the level 
of a deist god.  Even a deist god is supposed to care about human conduct.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 12:32 PM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

>
> 
> I would say that, under these definitions, the correct scientific
>  s
> tance is to be agnostic.
>

Does the agnostic or the atheist have
the correct scientific

stance regarding a teapot in orbit around Uranus? I like what the great
Isaac Asimov
 had to say on the subject:

*"I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an
atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I
so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."*

John K Clark













>
> In this mailing list, we have seen hypothesis about such a mind that
> do not require man-in-the-sky, creationism or other absurdities, nor
> conflict with current scientific models. Are they correct? I don't
> know, so...
>
> Telmo.
>
> > Brent
> >
> >
> > On 1/30/2017 2:26 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> >>
> >> I hope all atheists and all religious people with all of their silly
> >> certainties convert to intelectual humility and agnosticism.
> >> Then maybe we have a chance of transcending this silly monkey-stage
> >> where we seem to be stuck at.
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >> Telmo.
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 4:44 AM, Samiya Illias 
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> These videos might be of interest to some (the first one is by a Math
> >>> professor):
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> https://www.quora.com/What-reasons-have-made-an-atheist-
> convert-to-Islam/answer/Shau-Sumar?srid=s5B1=215c99a7
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Samiya
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups
> >>> "Everything List" group.
> >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an
> >>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> >>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
> >
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Everything List" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/7/2017 2:16 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Yes.  The relation of mathematics to facts in the world is one of
description.  That a dx/dt = -x has a decaying exponential as a solution is
not a fact about the world.  As any engineer will tell you, it means that if
the differential equation is a good description of something about the world
then the decaying exponential will be a good description of something about
the world.  The analogy with Godel's theorem is that if we create an AI
system to prove theorems, no matter how fast or long it runs it will not be
able to prove all true theorems.

And, importantly, it will not be able to prove its own consistency. If
we are machines ourselves, this also applies to us, right?


One cannot prove his own consistency as a formal axiomatic inference 
machines - but very little of our reasoning is in that form.  Even that 
which is in that form may not rely on axioms of infinity. Finite 
mathematics can certainly be consistent - every computer implements it. 
  And nothing precludes someone else from proving your consistency.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 06 Feb 2017, at 23:32, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/6/2017 2:09 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 As such it has nothing to do with facts in the world.


Which world?


This world.  The one I can interact with.



Ah! You mean this dream. yes, it looks we can share part of it, and  
interact with many users, like in second life. But to believe there is  
a primary world behind this requires an act of faith, and eventually,  
even if true in any sensible sense, if computationalism is true, we  
cannot use that faith, we have to reduce its appearance from a much  
small act of faith, like in the faith that x + 0 = x, x + successor(y)  
= successor(x + y), ...









Sorry, with computationalism, there is only a web of dreams, and it  
is an open problem if those "cohere" enough to define a notion of  
physical or sensible world.


So much the worse for computationalism.


Wait for the contradiction please. Up to now, we get only the quantum  
weirdness.


But at least we get the quanta/qualia difference, and, a notion of  
universal person becoming a key in the making of the realities (the  
universal machine and the truth about its many internal views of the  
arithmetical reality).




When you theory makes the existence of you world problematic - it's  
best to revise the theory.


But this can only come from the fact that you believe in a world  
existing fundamentally.


In science, that has been a wonderful hypothesis to focus on the  
natural science, but it is just not valid to use that hypothesis like  
if it was needed. And that hypothesis has failed on the person  
science: the person and its consciousness and soul is just eliminated;  
which contradict some data and evidence, making the *primary*  
existence of the world problematical.


Fortunately, there is a much simpler theory, or scheme of theories:  
any first order specification of any universal number/machine/programs/ 
words/system in the sense of Church, Post, Kleene, Turing, Markov  
(quite different but shown equivalent for computability). I choose  
Robinson Arithmetic for this, because people learn it in primary  
school, and I have never heard about some parents taking back their  
kids from the school, on the contrary, they agree all on this. And,  
like Pythagoras already felt, this is enough to get the men and the  
goddesses.


Physics keeps its importance, as it becomes somehow the border of the  
universal mind (the mind of the universal machine. Physics is much  
more well founded by this, a bit like chemistry is very well founded  
by quantum mechanics. The physical *laws* become part of the theorems  
of the machine's observable theory/theology, itself faithfully  
embedded in term of arithmetical relations, and sets of arithmetical  
relations, some computable, other not.


To do the research, you need to be agnostic, at least methodology. You  
have said more than once that the consciousness problem will dissipate  
in front of more and more clever/conscious machine, but I don't see  
why or how, and I think that consciousness is the grain of dust which  
eventually will halt the materialist religion. There is something  
simpler than that, and which (and this is both a relief and a source  
of anxiety) confront us to our gigantic personal ignorance, indeed,  
with a complex but rich mathematical structure.


I am not saying that computationalism is true, just that it is  
testable (up to a malevolent simulation à-la Boström). It might be  
false, we just don't know yet. To get the whole physics, we need the  
quantified version of G and G*, which I denote by qG and qG*. But the  
russians who solved the question asked about this in Boolos 1979, and  
that Boolos 1993 explains, is, as a theologian could expected,  
negative: qG and qG* are as much undecidable that they can logically  
be: qG is Pi_2, and qG* is Pi_1 in the oracle of the arithmetical  
truth. The One is already overwhelmed by the Noùs! Some truth about  
"the world of ideas" needs infinitely many God miracles/phone-call.  
And this is only the theology of a simple Löbian machine, like Peano  
Arithmetic.
Although a Löbian machine extravagantly rich like ZF, or ZF+kappa,  
obeys to G and G* for the propositional logic of their self-reference  
abilities, we cannot yet define their qG and qG*, which might not even  
make sense, ---in fact the critics of modal logic by Marcus and Quine  
do work for the "qG" and "qG*" of ZF. And for humans, it definitely  
cannot be done ... by humans, but mathematical logic provides tools to  
progress, and it is just logical that no machine can get in any  
communicable way its full theological reality.


I don't know if computationalism is true, but I do like it, if only  
because it puts the person at the heart of reality. Not the human  
person, but *all* persons. We, the persons, eventually are the maker  
of the sensible reality.


Bruno






Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 06 Feb 2017, at 20:22, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/6/2017 2:39 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Brent Meeker   
wrote:


On 2/5/2017 3:14 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some  
undefined,

amorphous ideology?

It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the
essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how  
hard it

is to define fascism:

http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf


Yet he defines "Ur-fascism", the eternal fascism, and is critical  
of it.  So
are you saying I should talk of ur-theism when I mean belief  in  
the God of
the Bible, Quran, and Torah?  And leave "theism" to be used to  
mean the

truths of arithmetic; So Bruno and I will both be misunderstood?

My point was simply that certain things are (perhaps) surprisingly
hard to define. You mentioned fascism, and it turns out this is one  
of

them. Pointing this out is not the same as muddying definitions.
Further, I argue that basing an ideology or belief system on opposing
an ill-defined concept can lead to terrible things.


Which is exactly why I'm explicit in defining what the theism is  
that I consider preposterous and what other god ideas I'm merely  
agnostic about.  Then Bruno criticizes me for "supporting" the  
former; rather than help him muddy the meaning of "God" so he can  
call the truths of arithmetic "God".


Let us try to agree on some definition of God. Most people, after and  
before Christ agrees on this: it is the origin of everything, it is  
what everything proceeds of, unnameable and transcendent, that is  
beyond us.


Are you OK, with it. Don't hesitate to improve it.

In that case, some have already argued, and develop a tradition were  
God is played by the concept of truth, because they got the intuition  
that truth is beyond us, and of course, most people agree also that  
truth has to encompass God if only to makes sense of a proposition  
like God exists, or like God does not exists (cf St-Thomas, to name  
one in the common tradition, but you will find similar statement in  
all religions).


Then with mechanism, the critics might be that using the set of $all*  
arithmetical true sentences is a bit too much, and indeed, as some  
point, we can argue that the sigma_1 truth is enough, but this will  
later be a typical G* - G statements, and so can easily be confused  
with a machine blasphem (and it is one if asserted without conditional  
by a machine).


Arithmetical truth, or reality is working, because we assume  
Mechanism, and so the arithmetical truth enacted all dreams, from  
which the physical appearances are explained (as a non computable sum  
on all those computations).


Now, in serious theology, we cannot invoke God, or revelations, or  
anything like that in the explanations. That is an error, and when you  
refer to a world, my feeling is that you do that error. You are using  
an answer to prevent a question. Nobody can see a world. It is a  
metaphysical notion, which might make sense, but actually does not  
when we assume computationalism, as I have explained.












Terrible things
have been done in the name of god and religion, and in the name of
fascist ideologies. It is also true that terrible thing have been  
done

in the name of anti-religion and anti-fascism.

I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in  
Portugal,

and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost
religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what
fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not  
more,
than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter  
from the

communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my
father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking
against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then
included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All
this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately  
there was
a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the  
US
for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period  
that

is still not openly discussed.


And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of  
fascism?...or

communism?

Yes, I reject simplistic views of History where one side is 100% good
and the other 100% evil.


But you seem to hold an extremist view of epistemology.  You are  
agnostic and can't judge anything because the only alternative is  
absolute certainty.  I don't believe you really think that way.  Are  
there not a large class of ideas that you evaluate as very likely  
true and which you would certainly act on and another large class  
that you reject and would not act on - in other words some you  
believe and some you fail to believe.



Absolute belief leads

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-07 Thread Alberto G. Corona

Lol. There is no way to avoid the absolute since nothing can be based on
nothing,.

In this case you reify nothing, which is purely negative, as absence of
anything,, and convert it to "something". And this something that you
implicitly postulate is an absolute ethical principle of humility, which
becomes your highest value with which measure everyone else so it becomes a
criteria for absolute ranking.

It is obvious that this humility is not humble although it is not arrogant
of course. That kind of humility can be summarized in this phrase refering
to false humble christians: "The progressive Christian know that he is
better than others because he believe that he is not better than others".

Why we do not admit that everyone need to feel in a better path than
others? I do. I'ts human.It is the reason why We do things. If not, we
would be completely redundant.

Concerning the adequacy of the agnostic stanpoint for acquiring knowledge
and, in general, for life, I have to say that it is not very good. At least
the atheists have  firm beliefs, which are a ground upon which they develop
a program for action (with disastrous consequences, by the way)  But in the
meantime they have been very active in achieving things. At least in the
euphoric phase of his bipolar syndrome. But agnostics have no plan, so, as
Aristotle said, reason without passion does move nothing, so agnostics...
are moved to very few achievements, they follow with mild critics and
disdain what is dominant.

2017-02-06 14:46 GMT+01:00 PGC :

>
>
> On Monday, February 6, 2017 at 11:39:35 AM UTC+1, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Brent Meeker 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of
>> fascism?...or
>> > communism?
>>
>> Yes, I reject simplistic views of History where one side is 100% good
>> and the other 100% evil. Absolute belief leads to terrible ideas, such
>> as trying to bomb countries into democracy.
>>
>>
> That goes for converting folks to humility and agnosticism too, which
> basically implies "humility/agnosticism in terms of my fuzzily defined
> reality bubble". That's both simplistic and unclear. PGC
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
Alberto.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-06 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/6/2017 2:09 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 As such it has nothing to do with facts in the world.


Which world?


This world.  The one I can interact with.



Sorry, with computationalism, there is only a web of dreams, and it is 
an open problem if those "cohere" enough to define a notion of 
physical or sensible world. 


So much the worse for computationalism.  When you theory makes the 
existence of you world problematic - it's best to revise the theory.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-06 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 05 Feb 2017, at 21:21, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/5/2017 3:14 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some  
undefined,

amorphous ideology?

It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the
essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how hard it
is to define fascism:

http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf


Yet he defines "Ur-fascism", the eternal fascism, and is critical of  
it.  So are you saying I should talk of ur-theism when I mean  
belief  in the God of the Bible, Quran, and Torah?  And leave  
"theism" to be used to mean the truths of arithmetic; So Bruno and I  
will both be misunderstood?




I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in Portugal,
and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost
religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what
fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not  
more,
than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter from  
the

communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my
father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking
against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then
included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All
this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately there  
was

a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the US
for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period that
is still not openly discussed.


And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of  
fascism?...or communism?





They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
acquired after birth through purely biological processes was  
verboten,

and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
creationists do).


You make my point.  They had scientific rational reasons they put  
forth for
their policies.  It was wrong science and it was enforced by  
violence (as

other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to supernatural
revelation and faith.

That was true in the beginning, but once you put your beliefs above
empirical evidence, like they did, I don't see where the difference  
to

an appeal to supernatural revelation is.


It's only a difference of degree.  Theists also try to make  
scientific arguments (e.g. first-cause, fine-tuning,...), but they  
also explicitly appeal to revelation and faith.




Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire  
awe

and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It  
was

also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the
opposition.


They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning.

I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions,
which is arguably 90% of philosophy.



Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"?


I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of  
theism
exists.  Agnostics were originally people who were not just  
uncertain about
God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything  
about,
a-gnostic.   So it was not a "nuanced" position -  
epistemologically is was

an extreme position and so deserved a name.

Yes, I tend to agree with this epistemological extreme, because I
think it is a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems.


??  Godel's theorems are about what is entailed by axioms in a  
formal logical system.



Gödel's theorem applies on any self-referentially correct machine  
(even those with oracles). Actually it applies on a large collection  
of arithmetical and analytical non-machines too.


The reasoning shows that physics "emerge" from the statistic on the  
first person views, on the leaves of the universal dovetailing "as  
seen by the machine itself" , and this means that we should get the  
logic of the observable on the []p & p, and []p & Dt (& p) logic, with  
p obeying p -> []p (p sigma_1). We get indeed three quantum logics  
(and if plotinus is correct, the first is the physics of "heaven", the  
second, the physics on earth, the third, the sensible personal  
physics, with the nuances brought by incompleteness (the justifiable  
rationally + the non rationally justifiable). It works 'till now.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-06 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/6/2017 2:39 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:


On 2/5/2017 3:14 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some undefined,
amorphous ideology?

It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the
essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how hard it
is to define fascism:

http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf


Yet he defines "Ur-fascism", the eternal fascism, and is critical of it.  So
are you saying I should talk of ur-theism when I mean belief  in the God of
the Bible, Quran, and Torah?  And leave "theism" to be used to mean the
truths of arithmetic; So Bruno and I will both be misunderstood?

My point was simply that certain things are (perhaps) surprisingly
hard to define. You mentioned fascism, and it turns out this is one of
them. Pointing this out is not the same as muddying definitions.
Further, I argue that basing an ideology or belief system on opposing
an ill-defined concept can lead to terrible things.


Which is exactly why I'm explicit in defining what the theism is that I 
consider preposterous and what other god ideas I'm merely agnostic 
about.  Then Bruno criticizes me for "supporting" the former; rather 
than help him muddy the meaning of "God" so he can call the truths of 
arithmetic "God".



Terrible things
have been done in the name of god and religion, and in the name of
fascist ideologies. It is also true that terrible thing have been done
in the name of anti-religion and anti-fascism.


I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in Portugal,
and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost
religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what
fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not more,
than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter from the
communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my
father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking
against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then
included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All
this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately there was
a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the US
for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period that
is still not openly discussed.


And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of fascism?...or
communism?

Yes, I reject simplistic views of History where one side is 100% good
and the other 100% evil.


But you seem to hold an extremist view of epistemology.  You are 
agnostic and can't judge anything because the only alternative is 
absolute certainty.  I don't believe you really think that way.  Are 
there not a large class of ideas that you evaluate as very likely true 
and which you would certainly act on and another large class that you 
reject and would not act on - in other words some you believe and some 
you fail to believe.



Absolute belief leads to terrible ideas, such
as trying to bomb countries into democracy.


They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten,
and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
creationists do).


You make my point.  They had scientific rational reasons they put forth
for
their policies.  It was wrong science and it was enforced by violence (as
other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to supernatural
revelation and faith.

That was true in the beginning, but once you put your beliefs above
empirical evidence, like they did, I don't see where the difference to
an appeal to supernatural revelation is.


It's only a difference of degree.  Theists also try to make scientific
arguments (e.g. first-cause, fine-tuning,...), but they also explicitly
appeal to revelation and faith.

If you go far enough down authoritarian rabbit holes you eventually
get to "revelation". Example: North Korea and the Kim dynasty.


Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe
and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was
also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-06 Thread PGC



On Monday, February 6, 2017 at 11:39:35 AM UTC+1, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
> On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Brent Meeker  > wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of 
> fascism?...or 
> > communism? 
>
> Yes, I reject simplistic views of History where one side is 100% good 
> and the other 100% evil. Absolute belief leads to terrible ideas, such 
> as trying to bomb countries into democracy. 
>
>
That goes for converting folks to humility and agnosticism too, which 
basically implies "humility/agnosticism in terms of my fuzzily defined 
reality bubble". That's both simplistic and unclear. PGC

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-06 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 2/5/2017 3:14 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>>
>>> Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a
>>> definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some undefined,
>>> amorphous ideology?
>>
>> It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the
>> essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how hard it
>> is to define fascism:
>>
>> http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf
>
>
> Yet he defines "Ur-fascism", the eternal fascism, and is critical of it.  So
> are you saying I should talk of ur-theism when I mean belief  in the God of
> the Bible, Quran, and Torah?  And leave "theism" to be used to mean the
> truths of arithmetic; So Bruno and I will both be misunderstood?

My point was simply that certain things are (perhaps) surprisingly
hard to define. You mentioned fascism, and it turns out this is one of
them. Pointing this out is not the same as muddying definitions.
Further, I argue that basing an ideology or belief system on opposing
an ill-defined concept can lead to terrible things. Terrible things
have been done in the name of god and religion, and in the name of
fascist ideologies. It is also true that terrible thing have been done
in the name of anti-religion and anti-fascism.

>> I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in Portugal,
>> and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost
>> religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what
>> fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not more,
>> than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter from the
>> communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my
>> father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking
>> against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then
>> included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All
>> this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately there was
>> a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the US
>> for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period that
>> is still not openly discussed.
>
>
> And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of fascism?...or
> communism?

Yes, I reject simplistic views of History where one side is 100% good
and the other 100% evil. Absolute belief leads to terrible ideas, such
as trying to bomb countries into democracy.

>>> They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
>>> insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
>>> Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
>>> engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
>>> changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
>>> transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
>>> that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
>>> acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten,
>>> and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
>>> creationists do).
>>>
>>>
>>> You make my point.  They had scientific rational reasons they put forth
>>> for
>>> their policies.  It was wrong science and it was enforced by violence (as
>>> other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to supernatural
>>> revelation and faith.
>>
>> That was true in the beginning, but once you put your beliefs above
>> empirical evidence, like they did, I don't see where the difference to
>> an appeal to supernatural revelation is.
>
>
> It's only a difference of degree.  Theists also try to make scientific
> arguments (e.g. first-cause, fine-tuning,...), but they also explicitly
> appeal to revelation and faith.

If you go far enough down authoritarian rabbit holes you eventually
get to "revelation". Example: North Korea and the Kim dynasty.

>>> Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe
>>> and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
>>> Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was
>>> also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
>>> dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
>>> reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the
>>> opposition.
>>>
>>>
>>> They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning.
>>
>> I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions,
>> which is arguably 90% of philosophy.
>>
>>
>>> Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"?
>>>
>>>
>>> I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of theism
>>> exists.  Agnostics were originally people who were not just uncertain
>>> about
>>> God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything about,
>>> a-gnostic.   So it was not a "nuanced" position - epistemologically is
>>> was
>>> an

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-05 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 03 Feb 2017, at 19:53, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/3/2017 1:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 02 Feb 2017, at 17:50, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/2/2017 1:40 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Initial remark: I am not a theist! It is possible to reject both
theism and atheism. It's called agnosticism.

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 9:20 PM, Brent Meeker  
 wrote:

On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I agree with the video. You might also like this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"
But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate  
arbiter of all

morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.

I oppose most organised religions for this very reason, but I don't
agree that theism "demands it" (as we've discussed before). The
problem with atheism is that it defines the side it opposes  
(which is

inconsistent), and thus engages in the fiction.


Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a  
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some  
undefined, amorphous ideology?  And theism is not a fiction - it's  
something that can be defined ostensively.  It's the common core  
beliefs about God held by those who call themselves Muslims,  
Christians, and Jews, which constitutes a large portion of the  
Earths population.  It is disingenuous to pretend that it means  
what the first person who used the word meant.  Meanings are  
detemined by usage - unless you want to be misunderstood, as Bruno  
does.


But anyone with a slightest interest in the field can see that the  
jewish, christians and muslims have, on the rational subject  
matter, oscillated between Plato and Aristotle theology, and  
eventually converged to a strongly Aristotelian view of reality,  
like Atheism.  Metaphysical naturalism is mainly Aristotle theology  
(simplifying things to be clear on the key difference).


Now, yes, we can say that the christians, or muslims, or jews, and  
perhaps even the atheists, which kept the idea of Plato are closer  
to the truth than the Aristotelian, and in science, we know that  
this matter is simply not decided, and even still taboo in some  
university based in part on the gnostic atheist "confession" (the  
belief, more or less explicit that matter exist in some primary  
sense, and that physics is the fundamental science.


Brent, if you have a physicalist theory of mind, let us know it.


Mind is the processing of information between sensors and actuators  
to achieve goals.  Consciousness is a relatively small part of mind  
(at least in humans) which is the creation of an internal narrative  
to be remembered for future reference in learning to improve the  
scope and efficiency of achieving goals.


I can agree with that, and in the simple case of the ideally correct  
machine, it is described in the machine terms by the (corresponding)  
provability operator. But its self-referential logic, this obeys  
already two different logics. G and G*. G is the rational part, G*  
gives the true part, and G* minus G, the surrational part.


That say nothing about the soul, which, if we accept Theatetus'  
definition ([]p & p), is given by the logic of knowledge S4Grz. But  
the machine cannot name either Truth nor her frist person point of  
view "the 1-I". We can do that for "simple" machines, as all machines  
can do that for simpler machine. It is that soul on which the  
universal consciousness differentiate.







It cannot be computationalism, as this needs non Turing emulable,  
nor FPI recoverable, actual infinities to keep an identification of  
person and body.


Why are atheists not jumping of joy when seeing that we can do  
theology with the scientific attitude? Why do the atheists defend  
so much the theories of God that they claim to not believe in?
  er the world mean when they use the word "God" to mean a  
supernatural creator who defines morality and demands obedience and  
worship.  Just because an atheist knows what he doesn't believe,  
that doesn't make it a defense.   I don't believe in fairies at the  
bottom of the garden either - is that a defense of fairy power?


I might as well ask, as I have, why you want to appropriate the word  
"God" (including the capitalization) to refer to a class of  
arithmetical propositions - which not one person in a million would  
recognize as denoting a god, much less God.



First, you forget the Pythagoreans, and neoplatonism which  
interrogates itself about that. There is an acute enneads on the  
numbers in Plotinus, and a whole of tradition focusing around the role  
of Number in theology.


Second, because once you work in the computationalist hypothesis, you  
don't need a bigger notion of truth. The

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-05 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/5/2017 3:14 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some undefined,
amorphous ideology?

It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the
essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how hard it
is to define fascism:

http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf


Yet he defines "Ur-fascism", the eternal fascism, and is critical of 
it.  So are you saying I should talk of ur-theism when I mean belief  in 
the God of the Bible, Quran, and Torah?  And leave "theism" to be used 
to mean the truths of arithmetic; So Bruno and I will both be misunderstood?




I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in Portugal,
and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost
religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what
fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not more,
than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter from the
communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my
father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking
against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then
included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All
this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately there was
a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the US
for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period that
is still not openly discussed.


And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of 
fascism?...or communism?





They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten,
and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
creationists do).


You make my point.  They had scientific rational reasons they put forth for
their policies.  It was wrong science and it was enforced by violence (as
other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to supernatural
revelation and faith.

That was true in the beginning, but once you put your beliefs above
empirical evidence, like they did, I don't see where the difference to
an appeal to supernatural revelation is.


It's only a difference of degree.  Theists also try to make scientific 
arguments (e.g. first-cause, fine-tuning,...), but they also explicitly 
appeal to revelation and faith.





Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe
and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was
also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the
opposition.


They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning.

I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions,
which is arguably 90% of philosophy.



Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"?


I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of theism
exists.  Agnostics were originally people who were not just uncertain about
God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything about,
a-gnostic.   So it was not a "nuanced" position - epistemologically is was
an extreme position and so deserved a name.

Yes, I tend to agree with this epistemological extreme, because I
think it is a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems.


??  Godel's theorems are about what is entailed by axioms in a formal 
logical system.  As such it has nothing to do with facts in the world.  
Do you suppose juries should always vote "Innocent" because there are 
truths that are unprovable from the prosecutions evidence?  Do you avoid 
sailing west from Portugal because we can't be sure the Earth isn't flat 
and has an edge you could fall off of?





  When Dawkins, who is often castigated as
a radical atheist, was asked, on a scale of 1 to 7 how certain was he that
there is no God, he said "6".  And since you like to credence original usage
of words over current usage you should know that agnosticism was originally
just considered a form of atheism - since it implies not believing in God.

I don't have such a preference. I am trying to apply reductio ad
absurdum to your argument.  You accuse me of obfuscating meaning by
going against the current use of a word. If that is not permissible,
anyone who did it before me should also be

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-05 Thread PGC

On Sunday, February 5, 2017 at 12:14:27 PM UTC+1, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>
> > Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe 
> > and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in 
> > Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was 
> > also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the 
> > dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and 
> > reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the 
> > opposition. 
> > 
> > 
> > They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning. 
>
> I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions, 
> which is arguably 90% of philosophy. 
>
>
> > Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"? 
> > 
> > 
> > I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of 
> theism 
> > exists.  Agnostics were originally people who were not just uncertain 
> about 
> > God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything about, 
> > a-gnostic.   So it was not a "nuanced" position - epistemologically is 
> was 
> > an extreme position and so deserved a name. 
>
> Yes, I tend to agree with this epistemological extreme, because I 
> think it is a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems. 
>
>
This assumes that Gödel's theorems (which one and how?) force a general 
epistemological extreme concerning knowledge that reads as though Gödel's 
theorems should force people into strong forms of agnosticism. "We don't 
know" in some unclear general philosophical sense involving the beliefs and 
positions of other folks in real life IS NOT a necessary implication of 
Gödel's theorems. Even assuming it were such a necessary implication: how 
could one even posit formal arithmetic to assume we are universal machines 
to get to Gödel in the first place? You have to assume that people are 
machines, Church Thesis etc. with Gödel.

What is implied by discussing philosophy in a general sense is not subject 
to formal rules of inference. Folks run into danger of confusing the 
results of formal rules of inference (and the precise systems to which they 
apply in their bounded study of arithmetic say), with much broader ideas 
that are much less clear. What is philosophically implied by a scientific 
theory is NOT determined exclusively by its internal rules, derivations, 
proofs etc.; it is just as much a matter of interpretation, opinion, 
argument, language and personal beliefs limited only by vast boundaries of 
the mind as with thought in general. 

When I read "convert" in your original post, it exposes a mindset that can 
appear to confuse the clarity of formal systems and their results with 
reality. Or worse, a mindset that exploits the universal presence of some 
terms, e.g. incompleteness, system, reasoning etc. to opportunistically 
frame discourse to advance the successful appearance of some assumed 
authority or narrative. Real potential for misleading obfuscation here. I 
wonder where all the humility and agnosticism went? Such lack of clarity 
should be avoided, if we're not just kidding around and if we're kidding 
around, I missed the punch line or the beauty of the thing, in which case 
the apologies are mine. PGC

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-05 Thread Telmo Menezes

> Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a
> definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some undefined,
> amorphous ideology?

It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the
essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how hard it
is to define fascism:

http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in Portugal,
and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost
religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what
fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not more,
than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter from the
communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my
father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking
against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then
included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All
this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately there was
a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the US
for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period that
is still not openly discussed.

> They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
> insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
> Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
> engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
> changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
> transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
> that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
> acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten,
> and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
> creationists do).
>
>
> You make my point.  They had scientific rational reasons they put forth for
> their policies.  It was wrong science and it was enforced by violence (as
> other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to supernatural
> revelation and faith.

That was true in the beginning, but once you put your beliefs above
empirical evidence, like they did, I don't see where the difference to
an appeal to supernatural revelation is.

> Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe
> and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
> Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was
> also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
> dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
> reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the
> opposition.
>
>
> They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning.

I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions,
which is arguably 90% of philosophy.


> Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"?
>
>
> I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of theism
> exists.  Agnostics were originally people who were not just uncertain about
> God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything about,
> a-gnostic.   So it was not a "nuanced" position - epistemologically is was
> an extreme position and so deserved a name.

Yes, I tend to agree with this epistemological extreme, because I
think it is a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems.

>  When Dawkins, who is often castigated as
> a radical atheist, was asked, on a scale of 1 to 7 how certain was he that
> there is no God, he said "6".  And since you like to credence original usage
> of words over current usage you should know that agnosticism was originally
> just considered a form of atheism - since it implies not believing in God.

I don't have such a preference. I am trying to apply reductio ad
absurdum to your argument.  You accuse me of obfuscating meaning by
going against the current use of a word. If that is not permissible,
anyone who did it before me should also be denounced, so let's retreat
to the original definition.

> And even deists, like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, were considered
> atheists because they didn't believe in the god of theism.

I get that. I wouldn't be particularly offended to be labeled "atheist
agnostic", in the sense that I do not believe in any of the gods
described in abrahamic religious texts. But I know nothing about god
in general.


> Yes, I used to tell people I was an agnostic.  But the problem was that they
> assumed I was just on the fence and undecided about their God (usually
> Christian in the U.S.).  But I wasn't at all undecided about Yaweh, any more
> than I was undecided about Zeus or Baal or Thor.

I understand that, I have the same problem.

>  And although I supposed
> there could be some god-like being, e.g. the great programmer in the sky of
> our simulation, it was a bare possibility which I estimated to be less
> likely than finding a teapot orbiting

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-04 Thread Brent Meeker

On 2/4/2017 10:51 AM, John Mikes wrote:

Stathis asked:

*/Is agnosticism about God different from agnosticism about other 
entities such as fairies and elves?/*

My reply is ab astounding *_ " N O " _*

I wold add to te fairies and elves the forces, the energy, the matter 
and all facets of a universe-built world we came up with in our 
speculations upon halfway understood (??) observations and their 
explanations (our way).
An agnostic just "doesn't know". Not those facets we talk about an not 
those we have no idea about (so far?).

Agnosticism is a hard principle to follow (ask Bruno).

Because to follow you formulation of it would mean you could never act 
because you would never know what to do.  But I'll bet you don't leave 
food for the fairies in the garden or look for elves in the forest.  
Why?  Because although you don't know for certain that they don't exist, 
you know well enough to act on the hypothesis that they don't.

Brent

JM

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 3:42 PM, Stathis Papaioannou 
> wrote:

On Wed., 1 Feb. 2017 at 4:32 am, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:

> Are you really agnostic about the god of theism?

Quoting from wikipedia:

"The term theism derives from the Greek theos meaning "god".
The term
theism was first used by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688).[5] In
Cudworth's
definition, they are "strictly and properly called Theists, who
affirm, that a perfectly conscious understanding being, or mind,
existing of itself from eternity, was the cause of all other
things".[6]
Atheism is commonly understood as rejection of theism in the
broadest
sense of theism, i.e. the rejection of belief in a god or
gods.[7] The
claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable is
agnosticism.[8][9]"

I would say that, under these definitions, the correct scientific
stance is to be agnostic.

In this mailing list, we have seen hypothesis about such a
mind that
do not require man-in-the-sky, creationism or other
absurdities, nor
conflict with current scientific models. Are they correct? I don't
know, so...

Is agnosticism about God different from agnosticism about other
entities such as fairies and elves?
-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google

Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
.
To post to this group, send email to
everything-list@googlegroups.com
.
Visit this group at
https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com 
.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-04 Thread John Mikes

Stathis asked:

*Is agnosticism about God different from agnosticism about other entities
such as fairies and elves?*
My reply is ab astounding * " N O " *

I wold add to te fairies and elves the forces, the energy, the matter and
all facets of a universe-built world we came up with in our speculations
upon halfway understood (??) observations and their explanations (our way).
An agnostic just "doesn't know". Not those facets we talk about an not
those we have no idea about (so far?).
Agnosticism is a hard principle to follow (ask Bruno).
JM

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 3:42 PM, Stathis Papaioannou 
wrote:

>
> On Wed., 1 Feb. 2017 at 4:32 am, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
>> > Are you really agnostic about the god of theism?
>>
>> Quoting from wikipedia:
>>
>> "The term theism derives from the Greek theos meaning "god". The term
>> theism was first used by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688).[5] In Cudworth's
>> definition, they are "strictly and properly called Theists, who
>> affirm, that a perfectly conscious understanding being, or mind,
>> existing of itself from eternity, was the cause of all other
>> things".[6]
>> Atheism is commonly understood as rejection of theism in the broadest
>> sense of theism, i.e. the rejection of belief in a god or gods.[7] The
>> claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable is
>> agnosticism.[8][9]"
>>
>> I would say that, under these definitions, the correct scientific
>> stance is to be agnostic.
>>
>> In this mailing list, we have seen hypothesis about such a mind that
>> do not require man-in-the-sky, creationism or other absurdities, nor
>> conflict with current scientific models. Are they correct? I don't
>> know, so...
>
>
> Is agnosticism about God different from agnosticism about other entities
> such as fairies and elves?
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-03 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/3/2017 1:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 02 Feb 2017, at 17:50, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/2/2017 1:40 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Initial remark: I am not a theist! It is possible to reject both
theism and atheism. It's called agnosticism.

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 9:20 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:

On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I agree with the video. You might also like this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"

But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate arbiter of all
morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.

I oppose most organised religions for this very reason, but I don't
agree that theism "demands it" (as we've discussed before). The
problem with atheism is that it defines the side it opposes (which is
inconsistent), and thus engages in the fiction.


Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a 
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some 
undefined, amorphous ideology?  And theism is not a fiction - it's 
something that can be defined ostensively.  It's the common core 
beliefs about God held by those who call themselves Muslims, 
Christians, and Jews, which constitutes a large portion of the Earths 
population. It is disingenuous to pretend that it means what the 
first person who used the word meant.  Meanings are detemined by 
usage - unless you want to be misunderstood, as Bruno does.


But anyone with a slightest interest in the field can see that the 
jewish, christians and muslims have, on the rational subject matter, 
oscillated between Plato and Aristotle theology, and eventually 
converged to a strongly Aristotelian view of reality, like Atheism. 
 Metaphysical naturalism is mainly Aristotle theology (simplifying 
things to be clear on the key difference).


Now, yes, we can say that the christians, or muslims, or jews, and 
perhaps even the atheists, which kept the idea of Plato are closer to 
the truth than the Aristotelian, and in science, we know that this 
matter is simply not decided, and even still taboo in some university 
based in part on the gnostic atheist "confession" (the belief, more or 
less explicit that matter exist in some primary sense, and that 
physics is the fundamental science.


Brent, if you have a physicalist theory of mind, let us know it.


Mind is the processing of information between sensors and actuators to 
achieve goals.  Consciousness is a relatively small part of mind (at 
least in humans) which is the creation of an internal narrative to be 
remembered for future reference in learning to improve the scope and 
efficiency of achieving goals.


It cannot be computationalism, as this needs non Turing emulable, nor 
FPI recoverable, actual infinities to keep an identification of person 
and body.


Why are atheists not jumping of joy when seeing that we can do 
theology with the scientific attitude? Why do the atheists defend so 
much the theories of God that they claim to not believe in?
  er the world mean when they use the word "God" to mean a supernatural 
creator who defines morality and demands obedience and worship.  Just 
because an atheist knows what he doesn't believe, that doesn't make it a 
defense.   I don't believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden either 
- is that a defense of fairy power?


I might as well ask, as I have, why you want to appropriate the word 
"God" (including the capitalization) to refer to a class of arithmetical 
propositions - which not one person in a million would recognize as 
denoting a god, much less God.  I don't ask because I know you will 
claim that YOU know what the word REALLY means - independent of all 
those millions of religionists.  But I suspect that it is because you 
want to fool some religionists into thinking you are proving their God 
exists.





All humans have talks about god(s) and goddesses since they are there, 
and all universal numbers grasp there is something big beyond them, 
but which is such that nobody can really talk about, except in 
theoretical terms and with interrogation mark.






You should really read Aldous Huxley, or inform yourself on all non 
abramanic theologies. Even the greek get most of their ideas from the 
persians, the indians, ... Pythagoras was mainly a great taveller.


Bruno
PS I posted this yesterday, but it did not seem to have gone through. 
I repost it today (03 February 2017).










You want to fight the encroachment of religion in our lives? I'm on your side.


This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-03 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 02 Feb 2017, at 17:50, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/2/2017 1:40 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Initial remark: I am not a theist! It is possible to reject both
theism and atheism. It's called agnosticism.

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 9:20 PM, Brent Meeker   
wrote:


On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I agree with the video. You might also like this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"


But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate  
arbiter of all

morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.

I oppose most organised religions for this very reason, but I don't
agree that theism "demands it" (as we've discussed before). The
problem with atheism is that it defines the side it opposes (which is
inconsistent), and thus engages in the fiction.


Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a  
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some  
undefined, amorphous ideology?  And theism is not a fiction - it's  
something that can be defined ostensively.  It's the common core  
beliefs about God held by those who call themselves Muslims,  
Christians, and Jews, which constitutes a large portion of the  
Earths population.  It is disingenuous to pretend that it means what  
the first person who used the word meant.  Meanings are detemined by  
usage - unless you want to be misunderstood, as Bruno does.


But anyone with a slightest interest in the field can see that the  
jewish, christians and muslims have, on the rational subject matter,  
oscillated between Plato and Aristotle theology, and eventually  
converged to a strongly Aristotelian view of reality, like Atheism.   
Metaphysical naturalism is mainly Aristotle theology (simplifying  
things to be clear on the key difference).


Now, yes, we can say that the christians, or muslims, or jews, and  
perhaps even the atheists, which kept the idea of Plato are closer to  
the truth than the Aristotelian, and in science, we know that this  
matter is simply not decided, and even still taboo in some university  
based in part on the gnostic atheist "confession" (the belief, more or  
less explicit that matter exist in some primary sense, and that  
physics is the fundamental science.


Brent, if you have a physicalist theory of mind, let us know it. It  
cannot be computationalism, as this needs non Turing emulable, nor FPI  
recoverable, actual infinities to keep an identification of person and  
body.


Why are atheists not jumping of joy when seeing that we can do  
theology with the scientific attitude? Why do the atheists defend so  
much the theories of God that they claim to not believe in?


All humans have talks about god(s) and goddesses since they are there,  
and all universal numbers grasp there is something big beyond them,  
but which is such that nobody can really talk about, except in  
theoretical terms and with interrogation mark.


You should really read Aldous Huxley, or inform yourself on all non  
abramanic theologies. Even the greek get most of their ideas from the  
persians, the indians, ... Pythagoras was mainly a great taveller.


Bruno
PS I posted this yesterday, but it did not seem to have gone through.  
I repost it today (03 February 2017).











You want to fight the encroachment of religion in our lives? I'm on  
your side.



This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the label "god" or something else.


But they didn't claim revelation from a supernatural being and  
they didn't

demand faith as the basis of morality.

They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
acquired after birth through purely biological processes was  
verboten,

and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
creationists do).


You make my point.  They had scientific rational reasons they put  
forth for their policies.  It was wrong science and it was enforced  
by violence (as other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal  
to supernatural revelation and faith.


But that is exactly what the dogmatic christians says, except for one  
book, where the mystic encourages the person reflexion and the

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-02 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/2/2017 1:40 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Initial remark: I am not a theist! It is possible to reject both
theism and atheism. It's called agnosticism.

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 9:20 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:


On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I agree with the video. You might also like this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"


But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate arbiter of all
morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.

I oppose most organised religions for this very reason, but I don't
agree that theism "demands it" (as we've discussed before). The
problem with atheism is that it defines the side it opposes (which is
inconsistent), and thus engages in the fiction.


Inconsistent?  Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a 
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some undefined, 
amorphous ideology?  And theism is not a fiction - it's something that 
can be defined ostensively.  It's the common core beliefs about God held 
by those who call themselves Muslims, Christians, and Jews, which 
constitutes a large portion of the Earths population.  It is 
disingenuous to pretend that it means what the first person who used the 
word meant.  Meanings are detemined by usage - unless you want to be 
misunderstood, as Bruno does.




You want to fight the encroachment of religion in our lives? I'm on your side.


This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the label "god" or something else.


But they didn't claim revelation from a supernatural being and they didn't
demand faith as the basis of morality.

They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten,
and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
creationists do).


You make my point.  They had scientific rational reasons they put forth 
for their policies.  It was wrong science and it was enforced by 
violence (as other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to 
supernatural revelation and faith.




Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe
and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was
also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the
opposition.


They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning.



A funny story about the Fernsehturm is that, when the sun is shining,
the reflection on the big ball on top looks like a christian cross.
People called it "the Pope's Revenge". Intuitively, everyone knew this
was a battle of religions.


  They made arguments for their
position, which implies that they recognized the importance of facts and
reason

So did the nazis. But then they also had concentration camps. The USSR
had goulags, the KGB and the Stasi.
They cared about facts only to the degree that they agreed with their
preconceived notions. Just like the religious extremists.

I always find in this type of discussion that there is a tendency to
want to pretend that certain (big) things did not happen. They did,
and there are lessons to be learned from them.


- even though they lied about what they were.  It is only theism
which says, "It's a mystery.  You must accept God on faith."

The problem with atheism is that it knows no nuance. Yes, it is stupid
to demand god or anything else to be accepted on faith, but it is also
stupid to pretend that there is no mystery.


I don't know any atheist who pretends that.  It's certainly not an 
attribute of atheism per se.





Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of
inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent, because
the thing that it opposes is also not coherent).


Sure they are different.  But, no, atheism is not a belief system. It's no
more a belief system than failing to believe there are fairies in the garden
is a belief system.  Atheism is failure to believe in a certain class gods:

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-02 Thread PGC

On Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 12:19:46 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 01 Feb 2017, at 21:20, Brent Meeker wrote: 
>
>
>
>
> > 
> > Brent 
> > "Atheism is a belief system the way "Off" is a TV channel." 
> >--- George Carlin 
>
> That is agnosticism (in the usual mundane sense). It is agnostic   
> atheism, and it is the antipode of the gnostic atheism, with its   
> double strong belief: no god but matter. 
>
> In (theological) science, no invocation of any god can be valid. There   
> is no ontological commitments *at all*, not even on the intended model/ 
> meaning of the terms used in the theory. Existential statement are not   
> metaphysical ontological commitment. Of course, when we apply the   
> science, like when saying "yes" to a doctor, or when just going out of   
> the bed in the morning, we must resort to some faith, and some   
> personal non communicable experience.

That's why the premise of this entire discussion over the years is biased 
towards the usual navel-gazing around these parts. 

If silly arrogant dogmatic monkeys are enough to offend us enough to- holy 
shit, hell just froze over- take a verbal stand against "the violent 
charlatans and organized religions and militant atheists" on an internet 
list, then it is not surprising that that freedom might vanish at some 
point.

What distinguishing features or concepts can adherents of atheism, 
agnosticism, some religion or some theoretical formalism point towards, 
that other groups remain ignorant of? That only agnostics know what modesty 
is (btw how modest of them...)? Or that a self-selected category of beliefs 
is sufficient basis to judge the world (hmm, let me guess: your beliefs) ? 
This person wrote this or that, and so we can all penetrate our navels with 
certainty: that person is evil! He unjustly appealed to authority! Omg wtf 
are we gonna do now?

As if we're somehow escaping the theological labyrinth, ethical conundrums, 
or delude ourselves as to having freed ourselves from the exclusionary 
limits of functionalism, its fuzziness etc. And all of the posts here fall 
into this trap, as if life were some internet beauty contest. Y'all ain't 
authorities on beauty though. None of you has ever run a pageant. 

So I don't see why folks should give a shit: none of these positions or 
concepts weighs more or less than all the categories we already use to 
compete with and distinguish ourselves. Agnostics can be as evil and stupid 
as religious folks and/or atheists. To make sweeping generalizations with 
some interpretation of history in tow is easy. What does believing xyz NOW 
offer in concrete terms? That agnostics, atheists, theists, christians etc. 
are insulated from being evil or wrong? That’s wishful thinking with a dash 
of vanity.   

None of these concepts help us navigate the barriers that cause pain or the 
usual interpersonal bullshit. Nobody is having the time of their lives 
discussing this, so why does publicly stating "I believe xyz" mean anything 
to us at all? Because public navel-gazing, playing university, playing 
class and measuring of dicks is fun (when we can see we're not too 
inadequate, right?)! Let's measure Carlin's and Dawkins' dicks and dig up 
Einstein's for good measure? Not the time of our lives, but still fun, 
right? PGC

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-02 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 01 Feb 2017, at 21:20, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I agree with the video. You might also like this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"


But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate  
arbiter of all morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.


That is not theism. It is not even christianism. It is Roman  
Institutionalized Christianism. It is a very particular, and obviously  
fake theory.


A recent poll in France has shown that 60% of french christians admit  
not believing in God. But they claim to be christian because they  
share the values of christianity, like compassion with the poor and  
the weak, charity, universality, etc.


Likewise, 90% of atheists believe in a physical universe. We can be  
agnostic about that too, and should be when doing fundamental science.


In science there is no revelation books, only experiences and reason  
that we try to share, and to account in some theory which we are  
willing to abandon in case of contradiction (internal or with respect  
to fact).


The scientific attitude is modesty and skepticism. To bring back  
theology in science means only to bring back modesty and skepticism in  
theology. Only fundamentalist believers are sick with that idea, and,  
as confirmed in the facebook atheist groups, I would say that one half  
of the atheists are strongly gnostic one: they do *believe* in a  
physical primary universe and they do believe in the absence of any  
sort of god (and so they contradict themselves at the start). That is  
two strong metaphysical beliefs.


Anyway, except for 2 or 3 ultrafinistists, we all believe in the god  
of the universal machine (arithmetical truth), and we can understand  
its transcendent (god-like) aspect by reason only, when we assume  
mechanism (or even without mechanism actually).


The divide is not between God or Not God, the real debate is on the  
nature of God (physical universe, arithmetical reality, person, not- 
person, good, bad, etc.). God is just defined by the absolute, but  
unknown, reality that the fundamental inquirer assume (or meta-assume)  
to exist independently of his local ego and environment. that some  
politics have made God into a Tyran is sad, we say only something  
about ourself and politics. It has been invented to stop the  
scientific inquiry and to manipulate people. perhaps we should be  
better to call that it a Devil.


All my books on theology use the term "theology", despite being highly  
non christian books (even when written by christians). It really looks  
like only (gnostic) atheists have a problem with the use of the term  
"theology", but then they automatically impose their religious  
materialist conceptions to the others, and sometimes with as much  
violence than the ancient christian, or the pseudo-islam radicals. In  
my university, there is an explicitly alliance between the gnostic  
atheists and the islamic radicals, against jews, christians, and in  
fact against ... agnosticism.








This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the label "god" or something else.


But they didn't claim revelation from a supernatural being and they  
didn't demand faith as the basis of morality.


They demand faith in the political bureau, or in the people (and we  
know what they mean by that). The early christians did not ask any  
faith, and many of them never took any legend as truth. This has come  
later. I have taken time to analyze christianism before and after the  
closure of Plato academy. It is almost antipodic.



 They made arguments for their position, which implies that they  
recognized the importance of facts and reason - even though they  
lied about what they were.  It is only theism which says, "It's a  
mystery.  You must accept God on faith."


Religious faith is indeed related to a feeling of a mystery, and that  
is the trigger to do fundamental science, or look for religious  
experience. That a precise version of God is asked to be believe in  
with blind face is no mre religion, like believing that cannabis is  
bad for the health without one evidence ever shown as few relation  
with care and health.


Why do atheists defend so much a theory they pretend/claim to not  
believe in is a mystery for me. They are *de facto* allies of the  
Church Dogma.









Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of
inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent,  
because

the thing that it opposes is also not coherent).


Sure

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-02 Thread Telmo Menezes

Initial remark: I am not a theist! It is possible to reject both
theism and atheism. It's called agnosticism.

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 9:20 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> I agree with the video. You might also like this:
>>
>> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg
>>
>> The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
>> thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
>> general. I would say:
>>
>> "putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"
>
>
> But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate arbiter of all
> morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.

I oppose most organised religions for this very reason, but I don't
agree that theism "demands it" (as we've discussed before). The
problem with atheism is that it defines the side it opposes (which is
inconsistent), and thus engages in the fiction.

You want to fight the encroachment of religion in our lives? I'm on your side.

>> This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
>> cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
>> name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
>> belief comes with the label "god" or something else.
>
>
> But they didn't claim revelation from a supernatural being and they didn't
> demand faith as the basis of morality.

They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten,
and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
creationists do).

Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe
and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was
also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the
opposition.

A funny story about the Fernsehturm is that, when the sun is shining,
the reflection on the big ball on top looks like a christian cross.
People called it "the Pope's Revenge". Intuitively, everyone knew this
was a battle of religions.

>  They made arguments for their
> position, which implies that they recognized the importance of facts and
> reason

So did the nazis. But then they also had concentration camps. The USSR
had goulags, the KGB and the Stasi.
They cared about facts only to the degree that they agreed with their
preconceived notions. Just like the religious extremists.

I always find in this type of discussion that there is a tendency to
want to pretend that certain (big) things did not happen. They did,
and there are lessons to be learned from them.

> - even though they lied about what they were.  It is only theism
> which says, "It's a mystery.  You must accept God on faith."

The problem with atheism is that it knows no nuance. Yes, it is stupid
to demand god or anything else to be accepted on faith, but it is also
stupid to pretend that there is no mystery.

>> Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of
>> inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent, because
>> the thing that it opposes is also not coherent).
>
>
> Sure they are different.  But, no, atheism is not a belief system. It's no
> more a belief system than failing to believe there are fairies in the garden
> is a belief system.  Atheism is failure to believe in a certain class gods:
> Supernatural eternal beings who created the universe and who judge human
> behavior.  I partly agree with Sam Harris when he say "atheism" is an
> unnecessary word; we don't have a word, "a-fairiest", for those who don't
> believe in fairies, or "a-yetist" for those who don't believe in yetis.  But
> only partly, because theism is (a) common and (b) demands faith (absolute
> belief independent of evidence); which is different from belief in fairies
> and yetis.  Even the advocates of fairies and yetis don't say you should
> believe in them by faith.

I agree with Sam Harris on this also (and many other things, but not
all!). I enjoy listening to his podcast.

> You are accepting the theists framing of atheism as an absolute belief that
> there is no god of theism.  But that's wrong.  Atheism is just saying that
> based on the evidence theism is no more likely true than fairies in the
> garden or yetis in the Himalaya's.

Then why do people feel the

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-01 Thread Brent Meeker




On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I agree with the video. You might also like this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"


But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate arbiter of 
all morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.




This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the label "god" or something else.


But they didn't claim revelation from a supernatural being and they 
didn't demand faith as the basis of morality.  They made arguments for 
their position, which implies that they recognized the importance of 
facts and reason - even though they lied about what they were.  It is 
only theism which says, "It's a mystery.  You must accept God on faith."




Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of
inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent, because
the thing that it opposes is also not coherent).


Sure they are different.  But, no, atheism is not a belief system. It's 
no more a belief system than failing to believe there are fairies in the 
garden is a belief system.  Atheism is failure to believe in a certain 
class gods: Supernatural eternal beings who created the universe and who 
judge human behavior.  I partly agree with Sam Harris when he say 
"atheism" is an unnecessary word; we don't have a word, "a-fairiest", 
for those who don't believe in fairies, or "a-yetist" for those who 
don't believe in yetis.  But only partly, because theism is (a) common 
and (b) demands faith (absolute belief independent of evidence); which 
is different from belief in fairies and yetis.  Even the advocates of 
fairies and yetis don't say you should believe in them by faith.


You are accepting the theists framing of atheism as an absolute belief 
that there is no god of theism.  But that's wrong.  Atheism is just 
saying that based on the evidence theism is no more likely true than 
fairies in the garden or yetis in the Himalaya's.  When Dawkins, who is 
often castigated as a radical atheist, was asked, on a scale of 1 to 7 
how certain was he that there is no God, he said "6".  And since you 
like to credence original usage of words over current usage you should 
know that agnosticism was originally just considered a form of atheism - 
since it implies not believing in God.  And even deists, like Thomas 
Jefferson and Tom Paine, were considered atheists because they didn't 
believe in the god of theism.


Brent
"Atheism is a belief system the way "Off" is a TV channel."
--- George Carlin

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-01 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 01 Feb 2017, at 12:10, Telmo Menezes wrote:


I agree with the video. You might also like this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"


Yes, that's the point. The problem is the use of authoritative  
argument. When done in biology in the ex-USSR, it led to the most  
starving problem due to human decisions.


Then the fact that we tolerate (and been forced to tolerate) the use  
of authoritative argument (argument per authority) in religion and  
theology is part of our history. It means that we have not yet  
compeletely succeeded in closing the Middle-Age period. The most  
important science remains in the hand of the institutionalized  
charlatans. To be fair, some charlatan in some religion are aware of  
that problem, and some churches do evolve.


Institutionalized religion have install solid tools to prevent the  
research in theology. Pagan, non confessional religious people and  
theological researcher have been banned or killed systematically. The  
gnostic atheists continue that work very well, making an important  
catholic bishop saying that atheism is the most faithful ally of the  
Church.






This includes organised religion but also stalinism,


In science, we often redefined the terms, and here I would say that it  
is a useful pedagogical idea, so as to circumscribe well the problem.  
Stalinism was based on the materialist faith in the second god of  
Aristotle: primary matter. Communisme in the East of Europa was a  
religious tyranny, and most people daring to try to conserve their  
religion were killed.




the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the label "god" or something else.


I use God in the sense of the thing we believe should explain  
everuthing, and that we feel or assume to exist despite we can't have  
any rational justification. Then we can show that all ideally correct  
machine looking inward develop such a belief (even if lacking any  
senses or perceptions). All machine looking inward develop the  
intution that truth about them is larger than what they can eventually  
justify. There is a surrational corona extending the rational, with  
respect to all machine. The most famous proposition/sentence belonging  
to that corona is Gödel's self-consistency statement. A machine can  
bet correctly that she is consistent, but will become inconsistent if  
she adds this as axiom. G* did warn us: <>t -> ~[]<>t.







Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of
inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent, because
the thing that it opposes is also not coherent).



I agree, with some proviso, since now many atheists consider that  
agnosticism is part of atheism, and which forces me to distinguish  
between gnostic and agnostic atheism. But some "propagandist" plays on  
that confusion. many people confuse indeed the absence of belief in  
God(s) with the belief that there is no God(s).


If g means God exists, in the large sense of "creative principle" or  
even "explanatory principle", or "reality", I take the believers to  
say "[]g", the gnostic atheists to say []~g, the agnostics to say ~[]g  
& ~[]~g.


Then in the computationalist theories, the faith can be restricted at  
the meta level to Church-thesis and to the medical practice personal  
bet, and at the scientific level it can be restricted to some part of  
the first order arithmetical truth/reality.


But people must be aware that even a question like the will or  
awareness of the arithmetical reality (the "small" God of the ideally  
correct machine) is very difficult, both to enunciate, and to solve  
(it extends in the analytical reality). I suspect the presence  
(assuming computationalism) of absolutely undecidable proposition,  
like plausibly computationalism itself)


I can explain more on this if people are interested, but there are  
also excellent books, like Rogers.


Are there people who have still a problem with understanding what is  
an arithmetical sentence and proposition?


To put it bluntly, mathematical logic *is* the theology of the correct  
machine, and even of the correct small gods (but there are big gods  
with too much arithmetical knowledge which have richer theologies!).  
Here by god(s) I mean simply a non computable set of (Gödel number of)  
belief/sentences.



Bruno

Only bad faith fears reason,
Only bad reason fears faith.




Telmo.

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 11:14 PM, smitra  wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN9sw7kbMGE

Saibal

On 30-01-2017 04:44, Samiya Illias wrote:


These videos might be of interest to some

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-01 Thread Telmo Menezes

I agree with the video. You might also like this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg

The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:

"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"

This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the label "god" or something else.

Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of
inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent, because
the thing that it opposes is also not coherent).

Telmo.

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 11:14 PM, smitra  wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN9sw7kbMGE
>
> Saibal
>
> On 30-01-2017 04:44, Samiya Illias wrote:
>>
>> These videos might be of interest to some (the first one is by a Math
>> professor):
>>
>>
>> https://www.quora.com/What-reasons-have-made-an-atheist-convert-to-Islam/answer/Shau-Sumar?srid=s5B1=215c99a7
>> [1]
>>
>> Samiya
>>
>>  --
>>  You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Everything List" group.
>>  To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>> send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>>  To post to this group, send email to
>> everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>>  Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
>> [2].
>>  For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout [3].
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> --
>> [1]
>>
>> https://www.quora.com/What-reasons-have-made-an-atheist-convert-to-Islam/answer/Shau-Sumar?srid=s5B1share=215c99a7
>> [2] https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
>> [3] https://groups.google.com/d/optout
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: From Atheism to Islam

2017-02-01 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 3:50 AM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 1/31/2017 9:32 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>>
>>> Are you really agnostic about the god of theism?
>>
>> Quoting from wikipedia:
>>
>> "The term theism derives from the Greek theos meaning "god". The term
>> theism was first used by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688).[5] In Cudworth's
>> definition, they are "strictly and properly called Theists, who
>> affirm, that a perfectly conscious understanding being, or mind,
>> existing of itself from eternity, was the cause of all other
>> things".[6]
>> Atheism is commonly understood as rejection of theism in the broadest
>> sense of theism, i.e. the rejection of belief in a god or gods.[7] The
>> claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable is
>> agnosticism.[8][9]"
>
>
> So the existence of any deity, say Yaweh or Zeus or Baal, is unknown or
> unknowable?
>
>>
>> I would say that, under these definitions, the correct scientific
>> stance is to be agnostic.
>
>
> And exactly why would you take a definition from a 17th century theologian
> and Platonist as authoratative?

Because he invented the term...
As you know, in my opinion "god of theism" is an ill-defined entity.
In my view it could refer to a number of different things, some more
unbelievable, or at least inconsistent, than others. But I know you
don't agree with me on this, so I resort to the original definition.

>  Are you also agnostic about polytheism and
> pantheism and deism?  Does agnostic mean you think nothing can be known
> about these questions - or does it just mean you're not absolutely certain
> about the answer.

Means that I am not absolutely certain. Of course, I have a landscape
of likelihoods in my mind. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to make a
living performing intellectual work. Well, I wouldn't even be able to
go to the supermarket. I apply the scientific method. Maintaining
intellectual honesty requires me to admit that there is a non-zero
probability that I am crazy or highly delusional. Notice that Trump
does not seem to have that capability. See where it leads... That is
what I mean by intellectual humbleness.

Atheism as an ideology seems sterile to me. It doesn't solve any
problems. It does not add to scientific knowledge, nor those it
resolve the problems created by organised religion. Nor those it make
a sincere effort to understand why organised religion and bizarre
beliefs are still popular in the year 2017.

Telmo.

> Brent
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

1 2 >

1 - 100 of 110 matches

Mail list logo