On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> A pendulum is only a metal rod. A clock is nothing but gears
"A brain is nothing but a glob of grey goo" says the robot.
> There is no clock sauce that makes this assembly a clock.
Yes there is, the clock sauce is the information on what the position of
the atoms in the clock should be in.
>> You engage in that manufacturing process for a reason or you do not
>> do so for a reason.
>>
>
> > You are the one who is relating everything to the idea of reasons, not
> me.
>
That is quite simply untrue, I never said everything happens for a reason!
I said everything happens for a reason OR everything does NOT happen for a
reason. Why this is supposed to be controversial escapes me.
> Why should we want to justify anything in the first place.
You tell me, you're the one who brought up justification.
> I would never assume that someone has no reason for their belief
Then assuming your beliefs are consistent (a gargantuan assumption I
admit) you believe that the belief generator in the mind is as
deterministic as a cuckoo clock.
> > I don't think in terms of winning debates or proving their unworthiness
> to myself
Baloney.
>> Yes, there are many astronomically complex reasons for a typhoon, so
>> I guess typhoons have free will.
>>
>
> > Are you being serious? Should we put typhoons on trial and punish them
> so that they will learn to stay away from our populated areas?
>
You tell me, you're the one going on and on about how the fact that reasons
can be complex has something to do with the "free will" noise.
> The cuckoo clock can't choose from among the many influences or choose to
> seek a new alternative, but I can.
>
You choose it because you liked it better than the alternative, so you made
the choice for a reason, and the mechanical bird jumped out of the clock at
noon for a reason too. For months now you have been chanting the word
"choose" as if it magically sweeps away all problems, it does not
> I made the reason.
And something caused you to make that reason or something did not cause you
to make that reason. Cuckoo clock or roulette wheel.
> Reasoning is a process
Yes exactly, reasoning is a process, that is to say it is a series of steps
leading to a outcome, a very good example of that would be a computer
program.
> > Voluntary manslaughter is not an accident, it is unpremeditated murder.
> There is a difference.
A difference the law is unable to coherently explain which is why criminal
law is such a incredible muddle.
> It sounds like you are saying they [my opinions] are robotic, in which
> case there is no possibility that your robotic opinions could be any closer
> to an objective truth than my robotic opinions.
>
Not true. If steps in my reasoning have fewer random errors in them than
you have and the process does not start with axioms like "everything is
true and everything is false" then my robotic opinions will be closer to
the truth than your robotic opinions.
I> t's funny that you care about the free market but without any free
> agency to actually use it.
You could make a model approximating how the world economy will evolve if
you assume all 7 billion people are rational agents trying to maximize
their gain. It's only a approximation because some people are not rational
and "gain" can mean more than just making money, and even so that's far too
complex for even a supercomputer to calculate; so we must make due with a
simplified approximation of a simplified approximation of the real thing.
And I haven't even mentioned things like the weather, earthquakes and
technological progress which can strongly influence economies. The
communists thought they could figure all this out and history proved them
to be not just wrong but spectacularly wrong.
> The reason doesn't matter even if their was one.
Then I don't know what " doesn't matter" means because X caused Y and X did
not cause Y doesn't mean anything.
>The butterfly wing was the reason. Who cares.
I do.
> The point is that you can't approach the totality of the cosmos and
> consciousness as a mechanical problem.
True, but the totality of the cosmos and consciousness is a mechanical
problem or it is not a mechanical problem.
> > I don't think that having reasons or no reasons matters at all.
I believe that's true, that is what you think.
John K Clark
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
