On 1/2/2015 2:45 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 2:40 PM, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 6:31 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Define telepathy, telekinesis, and remote viewing.
No. Buy a dictionary, if you're still confused after that I'll try to help
you out
but first you'll need to define define.
If you continued with the other steps of the universal dovetailer argument, you would
realize some of these questions aren't so cut and dry.
If your brain has many instantiations in many universes/realities/mathematical
structures, then your consciousness is reviewing these remote locations (and may next
find itself in such a remote location).
> So we don't have a bet,
I can't say I'm surprised, I've been offering this bet at the beginning of
the year
for over a decade but even the staunchest believer in the paranormal always
chickens
out when asked to put his money where his mouth is.
The intention of your bet is unclear. Is it to show that close-minded scientists who
have a history of deciding not to even review a paper that disagrees with their
presuppositions will continue to decide not even to review papers that disagree with
their presuppositions? Even if one strongly believed a surprising result would be made
in psi, the prejudice shown by leading journals on the matter would still make such a
debt unlikely to pay off.
Your insistence that scientists open with welcome arms ground-shaking discoveries is
disproved by the case of Hugh Everett, who was met with ridicule and (worse) inattention.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see
the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows
up that is familiar with it." -- Max Planck
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." --
Mahatma Gandhi
Einstein was never recognized with a Nobel prize for his discovery of relativity, the
council thought his discovery was too controversial.
> BTW, why sending this to the list. I have never heard people
defending para-psy.
Don't you remember Craig Weinberg? And my attack on parapsychology upset
you so much
you called me a bigot.
parapsychology
1. the branch of psychology that deals with the investigation of purportedly *psychic
phenomena*, as clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, telepathy, and the like.
psychic
1. of or relating to the human soul or mind; mental (opposed to physical).
2. Psychology. pertaining to or noting mental phenomena.
3. outside of natural or scientific knowledge; spiritual.
4. of or relating to some apparently nonphysical force or agency: psychic research;
psychic phenomena.
5. sensitive to influences or forces of a nonphysical or supernatural nature.
Much of what is discussed on this list concerns ontologies where the mental exists
beyond the physical, or is the foundation of the physical, and so would be a "psychic"
and accordingly a "parapsychological" phenomenon.
> most scienstist practice argument of authority, given that they
believe or not a paper just by
the title of a journal
Most scientists believe in reputation and in induction, so even if they
have not
personally duplicated the exparament they think that the numbers published
in
Science or Nature or Physical Review Letters are probably correct.
A policy to only publish things that are well established serves to protect the
reputation of the journal as a reliable source for probably valid results, but it serves
to slow down the rate of progress by hiding from view controversial but nonetheless
correct ideas.
But things would be quite different if experimental results were printed on
a
processed dead tree in a fifth rate "science journal" that nobody has ever
heard of,
or worse just data on a website run by somebody nobody has heard of, or if
they have
wished they hadn't. I know how to type too, I could easily start a website
saying
perpetual motion is possible and even provide results of experiments that I say I
have performed supporting my claim. It wouldn't take me 20 minutes.
I might add that with the exception of religion, a closely related
delusion, no area
of human activity has been as riddled with as much fraud as psi or ESP or
spiritualism or whatever buzzword is in fashion today for that drivel.
> the interesting question is what is the nature of God: a thing, a
person, a mathematical
reality, etc.
It is none of those things, "God" is a 3 letter ASCII sequence with the
binary value
of 01000111 01101111 01100100. And I have to disagree with you, I don't
find that
very interesting.
> atheists are ally to the institutionalized religion.
And up is down and black is white and atheism is just a slight variation of
Christianity.
Atheists almost universally use the Christian's conception of God, as the one they deny.
Bruno rightly points out that they never go so far as to deny all Gods, they just
substitute one "basis for existence" with another, which is also based on faith (and one
they're often blind to the fact that this belief rests on faith).
> You really seem to act that a bishop of religious atheism,
Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard
that one
before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.
> Do you believe in a PRIMARY physical universe? Or are you agnostic
on this?
I can't answer that until I understand the question. I know what you mean by
"primary", it's a brute fact, the end of a long chain of "why?" questions,
but I'm a
little fuzzy about "physical universe", and I don't want definitions I want
examples. Are only nouns part of the physical universe or are adjectives
and adverbs
part of it too? Are quarks or superstrings part of the physical universe?
Is
information part of the physical universe? Are thoughts part of the
physical
universe? Are the integers part of the physical universe? What about the
Real
Numbers or Complex Numbers? And if all these things are part of the physical
universe you need to give me at least one example of something that isn't.
Where do you think "the buck stops" when it comes to explaining our apparent existence
in a physical world? Below are some examples. I've underlined the "ultimate cause"
inherent in these different belief systems:
Idealists: _God_->Mind
Christians: _God_->Universe->Brains->Mind
Physicalists/Atheists: _Universe_->Brains->Mind
Platonists: _Mathematical Truth_->Number relations->Minds
Tegmark: _Math_->Mathematical Objects->Self Aware Sub-structures
What does the ontological chain in your would view look like, and what do you place at
the far left?
That there is something fundamental is a mere prejudice, a dogma of mathematics that
everything must be traceable to axioms. Ordering of explanations may be:
HUMANS->LANGUAGE->MATHEMATICS->PHYSICS->CHEMISTRY->BIOLOGY->EVOLUTION->HUMANS
People decry circular explanations, but that is only when the circle fails to include some
sector they understand. Explanation must always refer to something understood, so if the
circle of explanation is big enough to encompass everything it is guaranteed to either
include something you understand or you are simply incapable of understanding.
Brent
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