On 29 Aug 2011, at 00:23, benjayk wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 28 Aug 2011, at 13:50, benjayk wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Aug 2011, at 23:31, benjayk wrote:
I won't answer to this post in detail, simply because I find it
unsatisfying
to discuss details that are very easy to see for me, yet hardly
communicable.
Honestly, for all intents and purposes I have come to the
conclusion
that it
is just totally irrelevant to me whether COMP is true or false,
which
renders the discussion about it's consequences moot. I believe in
the
consequences that I like either way.
It seems to me all theoretical understanding is just a tool for
emotional
understanding anyway.
I think it is a bit dangerous to believe in things we like, just
because we like them. That is call wishful thinking.
I don't think I do this. If this were true I would just deny the
existence
of suffering... Which I don't.
Of course. I did not say you do that error all the time. I suspect
you
want to do it on a fundamental matter. I suspect you to be correct on
that, but wrong in believing this preclude a simple reasonnable,
still
a bit mysterious, possible origin.
If I am really honest I can't believe in wishful thinking. I try to,
but
really I don't at all. Let's face it, it just works in very limited
sense.
Actually, holding beliefs that are in some way "protected" (rather
than just
thoughts that pass by) seems to destroy my emotionally.
So I would rather formulate it this way: There is no purely
theoretical
understanding. We can't cut off theory from emotion (or more
generally,
inuition). It is not possible. At least I don't see it. I can't
conceive of
a theory without my own relationship towards it.
I guess you would change your mind on this if you knew about first
order logic.
Above the choice of the theory, which can always been considered as
emotional, the working *in* the theory, not only does not depend on
emotion, but it does not even depend on the interpretation of the
theory. Formalized theory are machine, their working is independent of
us.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Nevertheless I think truth and goodness are
very intimately related.
Plato and Plotinus identify God and the Good. Now, this is related to
very subtle point with the comp hyp.
Like you, and like all Platonist, I certainly wish and bet they have
very intimate relations.
Now that I think about it, if reality is good, preconceptions of
what it
should be will tend to cloud that. So as long as we are attached to
the
belief that reality has to be good, it probably won't reveal its full
goodness.
This may be the reason that many people lack belief in God. They
intuit that
it, ultimately, if there is any Truth, it need not be believed in!
Not sure I understand. "God" does not "need" we believe in It.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Theoretical understanding and emotional understanding provides a
two-
way road. They complement each other very well, but can also be
orthogonal on some point. Comp itself is a locus where the theory
predict an opposition between reason and heart, with the
explanation
that they are both right from their point of view, yet the view are
not entirely conciliable. Science will favor Bp, and religion will
favor Bp & p. Truth, the "& p", plays the role of a mystical
element.
OK. For me, I found that in case of doubt it seems to be better to
follow
the heart.
In case in doubt? Only reason doubt, the heart does not. But reason
can foresee probable consequence.
Reason is only doubt, and the heart never doubt, except for ... a
reason.
Well, I just reason in he machine's theory. But, let me tell you
this:
it is my heart which pushes me to listen to the machines.
Your right, the heart cannot doubt, it feels what it feels. What I
meant was
rather that when there is orthogonality, and we have the feeling of
"choosing" between reason and heart, we delude ourselves when we
claim we
follow only reason, because reason cannot really be followed on it's
own, it
is more an instrument. Thus ultimately what we do will be determined
by what
we feel either way (even if it's what we feel about our reasoning).
OK. In fact explicit reason is a recent event in evolution.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
At least
I saw it in me, that when I am dogmatic on not using coercion
towards
myself, this sometimes leads to greater (but more unconscious)
coercion!
If I really think I have to do something, it might be better to
coerce
myself to do it, rather than suffering the consequences of not
following my
own sense of responsibility.
OK. I was thinking about coercion on others. But social life can
explain acceptance of form of coercion, but not argument by
authority,
or any dogma, in any matter.
It is subtle. Sometimes authorities can be helpful, because people
have
nothing else to follow!
Yes. Authorities are helpful, and very important.
I was just talking of argument per authority. Those are never used by
authorities, only by fake authority and people lacking faith and self-
confidence. Except in urgent and catastrophes situation.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
It become
more and likely to me that we are not here contigently, but actually
to
learn a "lesson" (not like in school, just have intuitive insight
about
yourself) - and apperent contigencies are just part of the lesson
(or truly
don't matter for our lesson).
This does not contradict anything I said.
OK... It sounded to me like you meant that it is accidental whether
we are
able to self-love, because it is determined by our ancestors anyway.
That can happen too, but does not contradict what you were saying.
It is important to keep this in mind in real life. I have seen people
dying form disease, mainly because their friends made them guilty of
it. They think : "If you are sick, you must have done something
wrong". But this is a wishful thinking to appease their own fear of
the disease. This is a rare thing which I don't follow in some
buddhist school: that if something bad happen to you, it is due to an
error you have made in some preview life. But this eliminate too much
contingencies a priori. They may be right, or they may be wrong. I am
just very *agnostic* on this. With comp, we cannot avoid a part of
contingency, like the WM duplication already illustrates.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Of course there is no clear evidence that any of this is true. We
can just
trust in our own intuition. This does not mean believing all
esoteric stuff,
just being open to the possibility of something way vaster than this
realm.
Which realm?
The inside-arithmetic mindscape is already much vaster than the
physical universe, even seen at the level of galaxies filaments.
I am speaking of transcendental, spiritual realms. Most rational
people tend
to disbelief into spiritual realms.
Making them utterly irrational, and eventually consciousness and
person eliminating.
Materialism + mechanism leads to person eliminativism. Conceptually
first, and physically after.
In fact, with materialism+mechanism, persons becomes an annoyance, or
an object. Sade did see this, and did see the humanistic contradiction.
So I think it is rather good for humanity to get the point that we
cannot have both mechanism and materialism, even if a part of the
spiritual becomes mathematical.
Somehow they really don't want them to
exist.
Which is of course still a form of wishful thinking. To take desire
for reality.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Even science is about love (towards
knowledge, progress, modesty,... - actually all very important
things even
outside of science).
Yes. Reason is the best servant of the heart, but only when the
heart
can respect and listen to reason.
The heart without reason leads to sort of hot madness.
Reason without heart leads to a sort of cold madness.
Happiness and love needs both reason and heart: it is cool
madness :)
Hm, I guess you didn't wrote what you intended to here. Anyway, I
still
agree. Though I would say there are some situations where it may be
good to
relinquish all reason (like when meditating), but I can't imagine
any
situation where it is good to not use the heart at all.
Sure.
But my heart fears those who use their reason to preserve their
heart.
"Tout va très bien Madame la Marquise".
That is the bad sort of wishful thinking, the root of the self-lies
(which makes Lady sally so nervous, it seems).
Use their reason to preserve their heart? Why not?
By "preserve" I meant "over-protecting". Hiding painful truth. This
can be justified with dying people, and with little children ...
perhaps. But experience and logic explains this lead to catastrophes.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
With man made machine, it will be like that: either we recognize
ourself in those machine, and love them, or we don't. If we don't
their "heart" will not develop, and we will get the cold madness. I
think. But this, of course cannot be normative. Nobody can force
someone to love anything. In fact, and that is a reason you might
one
day ... love comp, is that with comp the reason build theories and
warn the heart for NOT using them. Love and intelligence, like God,
has only "negative theological feature". The theories are
metatheories
pointing on the pitfall of taking anything there too much
literally.
Comp is really the most opposite thing to reductionism, despite its
main precise looks, and is often described as a form of
reductionism.
But it is not, and people have to do some work on Gödel's technic
to
understand that the reductionist appearance of the numbers is the
main
illusion.
Hm, OK. It still seems to me reducing the ontology to numbers is a
form of
reductionism as well.
It can be seen as an ontological reductionism, but it is not a
reductionism of what really counts: matter and consciousness.
I can relate your feeling only to the intuition that our
"generalized"
brain might be non turing emulable, or to a reductionist view of what
the (admittedly immaterial) machines are really capable of,
especially
when connected to truth in its necessary and contingent
manifestations. It is certainly an ontological reductionism, but it
is
is close to a maximal anti-reductionism of what are persons, and it
gives to persons, mind, and consciousness a leading role in the
selection and development of realities (samsara if you will) and
their
exit doors (nirvana for example).
If we are machine, the cardinality statements on the ontological
reality is simply absolutely undecidable. It does not matter, because
Goddess(es), consciousness, Matter, histories and geographies, and
many layers of realities develop and can be observed from inside, and
it seems to me that it is what "really" counts.
I understand it might be sees as shockingly new for the Aristotelian
believers. But nobody forces you to take the comp red pill. Keep this
in mind.
OK, it is very good that you don't try to eliminate consciousness,
and that
you are very modest with regards to whether the theory is true. So
there is
no point debating technicalities. What matters most is that we don't
claim
to own the truth, and eliminate things which are obviously there.
We agree on this. Sometimes I think we might just differ on the
question of the existence of God's will. That is a difficult open
problem in comp. It is also where I found that Plotinus is the most
unclear. He acknowledges the fact.
Our difference stems probably on the fact that you want to identify
the inner God and God, knowledge and truth, as we have already
discussed. But we have already concluded that this is related to the
fact that you are no so interested in following the scientific method
(the little man discursive reason tool). And that is a question of
personal interest, only.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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