RE: Films I think people on this forum might like
you guys should check out Dark City (has a platonic reality isn't really real thing going on) Moon (has a memory/identity/AI thing going on) Source Code (has a 'its just numbers being computed' thing going on) Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker are also pretty stunning if you can handle 10 minute shots of dripping water and general Russian misery etc. happy viewing! :) From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Films I think people on this forum might like Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2014 12:25:00 +0100 On 04 Feb 2014, at 08:33, LizR wrote:My son (15) has been trying to get us to watch Incaption for a while. Once we get time... After the prestige, that was rather disappointing, for me. My favorite movie is the thirteenth floor, or the corresponding novel SIMULACRON III (Daniel Galouze). According to some people, MATRIX is full of allusion to conscience mécanisme but I can't see it without falling asleep. I still don't know if it is comp-correct, like simulacron III is. Boring and not quite sexy, but I would have love it, I guess, if I was 12 years old. Bruno On 4 February 2014 20:19, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Some more I can add that I enjoyed: Adjustment Bureau Inception Open Your Eyes (Spanish language, with subtitles). These are mainly virtual reality type movies. I'm going to add some of the others mentioned to my DVD service queue. Cheers On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 03:45:47PM -0600, Jason Resch wrote: Liz, Great recommendations, and excellent topic idea. The Prestige is the movie that got me interested in these topics and led me to this list. Also, for US viewers, Chronochrimes goes by Timecrimes and is available under netflix under that title. I found it to be the first realistic portrayal of single-universe time travel in any movie I have seen. Somewhat off-topic being a TV series, but the recently reimagined Battlestar Galactica probes many of the questions of machine vs. human consciousness. I recommend it to Craig. Jason On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 12:14 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: One I've mentioned ad nauseum - Memento. There is also The Prestige, which I would definitely recommend. To avoid spoilers, I won't go into detail about why these films might appeal, but they both address issues mentioned on this list (at least tangentially, and in a fictional manner). I might also mention Chronocrimes for its portrayal of a block univese. Sadly no one seems to have filmed October the First is Too Late although the 10-episode epic Doctor Who story The War Games comes close in some respects. In fact I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Who story was inspired by Hoyle's novel, which I think appeared about 3 years beforehand if I remember correctly. I would semi-recommend this (but you have to remember that it was made in black and white, for viewing as a weekly serial in 1969...) -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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
RE: Suicide Words God and Ideas
Hi Chris dM and Bruno etc Once, Chris Peck said that he was convinced by Clark's argument) and I invited him to elaborate, as that might give possible lightening. He did not comply, and I was beginning that UDA was problematical for people named Chris. I think Clark should elaborate on his arguments rather than me, firstly because he'll do it better than I ever could and secondly it will save me the embarrassment if I have him wrong. I've elaborated at length on my own criticisms of step 3 and stand by them. I will say though that I find it astonishing if people work their way through Bruno's steps and claim to understand them and then maintain that Clark's erudite and ofttimes witty criticisms are in some way obtuse or difficult to follow. That the person who actually devised the steps themselves remains confused about Clark's comments almost beggars belief. There;s something very odd about that. There is some fuss about Clark's reluctance to apply his argument to MWI. Like some others I think Clark possibly makes a misstep when (if?) he defends the notion of 1p in-determinism within an MWI context. I can see though that in Comp people are duplicated within worlds whereas in MWI they are duplicated between worlds, and there possibly are some repercussions vis a vis the proper use of pro-nouns because of that. Im not sure it matters much, because Clark could be right about Comp and just inconsistent about MWI. So this complaint, loudly pursued by Quentin, has always seemed impotent to me and not worth bothering about. Im reluctant to get involved in the step 3 discussions because, mentioning no names Quentin and PGC, people can get very emotional and arm wavey about people criticizing Bruno's metaphysics. So for now at least, I'll limit myself to recommending the odd sci-fi movie on the film thread. The Quiet Earth (1985) is a little known gem, btw. All the best Chris. Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 12:00:42 +1300 Subject: Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 12 February 2014 10:55, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 4:10 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 12 February 2014 08:50, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 1:42 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 12 February 2014 00:41, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 3:45 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 11 February 2014 18:40, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: String theory based on Maldacena's conjecture predicted the viscosity of the quark-gluon plasma before it was measured Correctly, I assume. and more recently explained the mechanism behind EPR based on Einstein-Rosen bridges, which is more like a retrodiction. That seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, although the initials have a nice near-symmetry. Why would one need to have ERBs - that presumably have to be kept open by some exotic mechanicsm - to explain EPR when you can do it very simply anyway? And how can it be done very simply? By dropping Bell's assumption that time is fundamentally asymmetric (for the particles used in an EPR experiment, which are generally photons). Please explain how dropping asymmetric time explains EPR. It makes it logically possible. I will have to ask a physicist for the details, but it is a mechanism whereby the state of the measuring apparatus can influence the state of the entire system. If we assume the emitter creates a pair of entangled photons and their polarisation is measured at two spacelike-separated locations, then the polarisers can act as a constraint on the state of the photons and hence of the system, and that the setting of one polariser can therefore influence the polarisation measured in the other branch of the experiment (without any FTL signals / non-locality). This preserves realism and locality at the expense of dropping an assumption that most physicists think is untrue anyway (though the idea of time being asymmetric is so deeply ingrained that we automatically assume it must be true of systems it doesn't apply to, like single photons). Your explanation is hardly satisfactory for this physicist That's because I'm not a physicist. I'm merely showing that an explanation is possible, and hence should be investigated (although it isn't me showing this - it's been looked into by various people, from Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory onwards). It has been considered a satisfactory basis for an explanation of Bell's Inequality by some physicists, including John Bell. -- 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
RE: Suicide Words God and Ideas
Hi Quentin I do not, valid critics are valid, By definition mate. but when you point to someone the inconsistency in his argument and that he maintains for years the same invalid argument that means that person does not want to argue, he wants to defend a position at all costs, that's evil. This is what I mean by emotional arm waving. I can honestly think of things that are more evil and I suppose, from Clark's point of view, hes been pointing out the inconsistencies in Bruno's argument for two years too. Does that make Bruno evil??? In a later post you try to rebut Clark : In the MWI John Clark doesn't have to worry about who I or you is because however many copies of I or you there may or may not be they will never meet. That changes absolutely nothing... just put the reconstruction of the W guy 200 years later than the M guy, they will never meet... But if you can send the W guy skipping through time, you can send the M guy skipping through time too. So they could potentially meet. In MWI 'copies' can not potentially meet. If this is your attempt to point out an inconsistency its dismissively lazy and fails triumphantly. In my opinion your beef is impotent anyhow. The most you'd ever show was that Clark applied his argument inconsistently, you certainly wouldn't show that he was wrong about Bruno's metaphysics. all the best Chris. Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 09:39:21 +1300 Subject: Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 14 February 2014 08:56, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: So no matter what is refuted we can save comp by saying that it is true but at a lower level and what we have observed that appears to refute comp is a dream or simulation at a higher level. If this is true, comp isn't a scientific theory. Of course the converse of this is that no matter what we observe then it cannot confirm comp. This is true of any scientific theory (if comp is one, therefore, also true of comp). -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Suicide Words God and Ideas
Hi Bruno Come on, the poor guy tried hard since two years, and has convinced only him That's a good way of spinning the fact that for two years it is in reality you who has failed to convince him. All the best Chris From: chris_peck...@hotmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Suicide Words God and Ideas Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 22:23:08 + Hi Quentin I do not, valid critics are valid, By definition mate. but when you point to someone the inconsistency in his argument and that he maintains for years the same invalid argument that means that person does not want to argue, he wants to defend a position at all costs, that's evil. This is what I mean by emotional arm waving. I can honestly think of things that are more evil and I suppose, from Clark's point of view, hes been pointing out the inconsistencies in Bruno's argument for two years too. Does that make Bruno evil??? In a later post you try to rebut Clark : In the MWI John Clark doesn't have to worry about who I or you is because however many copies of I or you there may or may not be they will never meet. That changes absolutely nothing... just put the reconstruction of the W guy 200 years later than the M guy, they will never meet... But if you can send the W guy skipping through time, you can send the M guy skipping through time too. So they could potentially meet. In MWI 'copies' can not potentially meet. If this is your attempt to point out an inconsistency its dismissively lazy and fails triumphantly. In my opinion your beef is impotent anyhow. The most you'd ever show was that Clark applied his argument inconsistently, you certainly wouldn't show that he was wrong about Bruno's metaphysics. all the best Chris. Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 09:39:21 +1300 Subject: Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 14 February 2014 08:56, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: So no matter what is refuted we can save comp by saying that it is true but at a lower level and what we have observed that appears to refute comp is a dream or simulation at a higher level. If this is true, comp isn't a scientific theory. Of course the converse of this is that no matter what we observe then it cannot confirm comp. This is true of any scientific theory (if comp is one, therefore, also true of comp). -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Suicide Words God and Ideas
Hi Liz Personally, I feel that objections to comp on the basis of what we can and can't do with our present technology are a bit hair splitting, or perhaps simply evading the issue. Anyone who has accepted the MWI has accepted that duplication is possible. my objections were to do with the correct way to predict expectancy in a universe in which every possible outcome occurs. They didn't concern technological limitations. I don't think anyone has objected on that score have they? All the best Chris. Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:31:28 +1300 Subject: Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Personally, I feel that objections to comp on the basis of what we can and can't do with our present technology are a bit hair splitting, or perhaps simply evading the issue. Anyone who has accepted the MWI has accepted that duplication is possible. (And anyone who thinks consciousness is digital above the quantum level has accepted Yes Doctor.) If there's a valid objection, I think it should be a bit more robust than oh but we can't do that (yet) ! -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What are numbers? What is math?
how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point? Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at the ground and says: there's a gold coin buried right there. Russell says: no there isn't They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of history no - one ever looks. Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are an MWIer. Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 14:10:34 +1100 From: li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What are numbers? What is math? On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote: On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist? You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g. millions of people have observed that the sun shines without understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion. Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in the Multiverse). But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point? Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so we'd better let him elaborate what he means. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Quentin They don't pose problem in this experiment and in the question asked. So I'll try one last time, and will try à la Jesse, with simple yes/no questions and explanation from your part. So I will first describe the setup and will suppose for the argument that what we will do (duplicating you) is possible. Quentin, that pronouns pose problems in the thoughtexperiment is clearly illustrated by your need to distinguish between 'you' and '*you*'. So you (John Clark reading this email or the one from tomorrow or whatever, so I'll use *you*) are in front of a button that is in a room with two doors. When *you* will press the button, *you* will be duplicated (by destroying you in the room and recreating you two times in two exactly identical room), Can you clarify. you say that when '*you*' is duplicated, 'you' is destroyed and 'you' is recreated two times. Is 'you' who gets destroyed and recreated '*you*' who presses the button? or someone different? Afterall, you explicitly introduced the distinction to make things clear, so Im not sure if you just made a typo. if not where did 'you' come from? I feel like huge violence is being done to the pronoun you here. I say you so that you can distinguish between you, 'you' and '*you*'. All are now in play. when I say you rather than 'you' or '*you*' I will be meaning you. the only difference in each room is that one has the left door open and one has the right door open... what do *you* expect to see when you'll press the button ? I thought '*you*' presses the button, but here you say : ' when you'll press the button' Did '*you*' or 'you' press the button? ie. did you mean 'when *you*'ll press the button'? look at this bit: 1- Do you expect to see the left and the right doors opened ? Yes/No 2- Do you expect to see the left or the right doors opened ? Yes/No If you answer 'Yes' at the 1st question, do you really mean *you* expect to see both event simultaneously ? In the questions 1 and 2 you are talking about what 'you' expect to see, but then in the follow on question you ask about what '*you*' expect to see. Are you asking about 'you', 'you' or '*you*' or all three? It seems to me that 'you' can expect to see one room or the other, and 'you' (the other 'you', there being two 'you' and one '*you*') can expect to see one room or the other, and '*you*' can expect to see both if 'you','you' and '*you*' bear the identity relation that is stipulated by the yes doctor assumption, you see? Note that in predicting to see both, '*you*' is not predicting 'you' or 'you' will see both. The result of the probability calculus ... actually, lets not call it calculus because its just a way of bigging up what infact is very little ... the result of the probability sum that '*you*' conducts is different from the result of the sum 'you' and 'you' conduct, because '*you*' is going to be duplicated but neither 'you' nor 'you' are. '*you*' has to bear in mind that both 'you' and 'you' are '*you*' in some sense. 'you' and 'you' don't need to worry about that. And infact to get any other result than zero from the sum, this identity relation between '*you*', 'you' and 'you' must stand, which brings us to another point: as Clark points out, preservation of identity is central to this thought experiment. The other point that Clark often makes is that step 3 is worthless, and if the intention of step 3 is to hammer home that duplicated people would only ever have a single POV, then step 3 is indeed worthless. Does Bruno really need to advertise an inability to conduct simple probability sums to convince you that individuals only have a single pov? But I don't think that is all step 3 is really about. Its also about trying to maintain 'indeterminacy' in the mistaken belief that it has a legitimate place in Everettian MWI. All the best Chris. From: allco...@gmail.com Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 20:53:46 +0100 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 2014-02-19 19:36 GMT+01:00 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com: On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 2:10 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Be consistent reject MWI on the same ground... don't bother adding the argument that you can't meet your doppelganger, So you want me to defend my case but specifically ask me not to use logic in doing so. No can do. That's not what I was asking, I was asking that if you use your meet doppelganger argument, == read the next quote. or you have to explain why the possibility of meeting render probability calculus meaningless. If Everett's probability calculus produced figures that didn't agree with both experiment and Quantum Mechanics then the MWI would indeed be meaningless because the entire point of the MWI is to explain why Quantum Mechanics works as well as it does. The thing is to devise a though experiment matching MWI, in the MWI case you
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Liz Suppose for the sake of argument that the matter transmitter sends you to another solar system where you will live out the reminder of your life. Maybe you committed some crime and this is the consequence, to be transported :) A malfunction causes you to be duplicated and sent to both destinations, but you will never meet your doppelganger in the other solar system, or find out that he exists. Does this make any difference to how you assign probabilities? If so, why? My probabilities get assigned in the same way. ie: chance of seeing solar system A is 1. I can't assign a probability of seeing Solar System B if I don't know about the possibility of accidents. But, If I know that there is a small chance of the accident you describe then the probabilities end up: Solar System A : 1 Solar System B : small chance. Note that the probability of seeing Solar System A doesn't end up (1-small chance) as far as I am concerned. Also note that in the MWI example, where small chances require a world of their own, the probabilities end up: Solar System A : 1 Solar System B : 1. So the probabilities work out slightly differently. I'm sure its an unpopular view but as I see it probabilities, however small, get rounded up to 1 in MWI scenarios. All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2014 20:45:39 +0100 On 20 Feb 2014, at 16:59, John Clark wrote:On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I can say today that I am the guy having answered your post of last week. But if duplicating chambers exist then there are lots of people who could say exactly the same thing, so more specificity is needed. Well, if it is about a prediction on 1p events, the specificity is simple: we have to interview all the copies. and neither is experiencing Helsinki right now, therefore Mr. he sees neither Washington nor Moscow. So, this is my first post to you, Bruno Marchal has certainly sent other posts to John Clark, but if duplicating chambers exist it's not at all clear who Mr. my is. On the contrary. It is always clear. In the 3p we are all copies, and in the 1p we are one of them.That is what they all say. They have they own permanent atomic memories like WWMWMM. Say. despite I remember having sent other post? The question is ambiguous because lots and lots of people in addition to Mr. I remember the exact same thing. Obviously. We agree. But there is no ambiguity. By definition of 1p and comp, we have to take all the copies 1p view into account. That is why if the H-guy predicted W v M, all its copies win the bet, and if he predicted W M, all the copies admits this was wrong (even if correct for the 3-1 view, but clearly false from their 1-views). If Mr he sees neither W or M, then he died, If Bruno Marchal wants to invent a new language and that's what the words death and he are decreed to mean then fine, but to be consistent John Clark and Bruno Marchal of yesterday would have to be dead too. And it should be noted that invented languages make communication with others difficult, just look at Esperanto, and John Clark thinks that deep philosophical discussions are difficult enough as they are even if conducted in a mutually agreed upon language, so more obstacles to understanding are not needed. You quote and comment yourself! and then comp is false. That's fine, I don't give a hoot in hell if the incoherent grab bag of ideas you call comp is false or not. The word is your invention not mine and you're the only one who seems to know exactly what it means. You have repeated that sentence an infinity of times. Comp is the quite standard hypothesis that the brain, or whatever responsible for my consciousness manifestation here and now, is Turing emulable.It is not my invention. comp abbreviates computationalism. I show the consequence, and you stop at step 3 for reason that you do not succeed to communicate. We also died each time we measure a spin, or anything. Then the word died doesn't mean much. That was a consequence of your saying. In AUDA this is a confusion You have forgotten IHA. I told you more than five times what AUDA means. Stop joking, and try to be serious. AUDA is the Arithmetical UDA, also called interview of the universal machine in sane04. It is the main part of the thesis in computer science.If you doubt that it means that you do repeat hearsay. between []p and []p t. How in the world could anybody be confused between []p and []p t especially if they had a nice low mileage AUDA convertible to help them get around town? Mocking does not help you. you believe we have refuted comp. That would be a gigantic discovery Not to me it wouldn't! I don't care if comp is true or false because I don't believe comp is worth a
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Bruno By and large you didn't get my response to Quentin and largely the comments you made didn't actually address the comments I was making, or the questions I was asking Quentin. It seems more as if you were addressing comments you hoped I was making but didn't. With respect then I've just passed all that stuff by. I thought this was worth commenting on though: So from the FPI, you can infer which you notion was involved. It is asked to the 1-you in Helsinki, coexistencial with the 3-you in Helsinki. And the question bears on which next 1-you H-you will feel to be, or equivalently, which city you will feel to be reconstituted in. The 3-you == 1-you in Helsinki knows that there will be only one, from his future pov. No, (3-you == 1-you) knows he has 2 future povs. He knows he will feel to be in both Washington and Moscow. How can I make this clear for you that this is a 1-p expectancy? Because I think you have things completely the wrong way around. You say that it takes an act of intellectual and 3-p reasoning to draw the conclusion that I will be in both W and M, and that more naturally from the 1-p perspective I will only expect to see 1 city. I say, no. Before the trip to both M and W I will day dream about walking through the corridors of the white house in Washington AND day dream about walking through the corridors of the Kremlin in moscow. I will imagine meeting and talking to Obama but also dream of meeting and talking to Putin. I'll sit at my work desk planning what I would say to each of them if we actually did meet. At night I wil dream of doing these things and wake up surprised that I am not actually in Moscow and not actually in Washington yet. And these dreams will be as 1-p as any common-all-garden dream. If I stop and think about things, if I intellectualize the matter from a 3-p perspective, then I will realize that my two future selves will be unique and separate and therefore will only see one or the other, but from my current non-duplicated perspective this will seem odd and hard to imagine. when I relax and let my mind wander I will expect to see both and dream of seeing both. So, when you ask me where I will expect to be, of course I will answer that i expect to be in Moscow and Washington. And if you tell me that I will in fact only experience one or the other, I will demand my money back or at least half of it. All the best Chris. From: chris_peck...@hotmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 03:48:43 + Hi Liz Suppose for the sake of argument that the matter transmitter sends you to another solar system where you will live out the reminder of your life. Maybe you committed some crime and this is the consequence, to be transported :) A malfunction causes you to be duplicated and sent to both destinations, but you will never meet your doppelganger in the other solar system, or find out that he exists. Does this make any difference to how you assign probabilities? If so, why? My probabilities get assigned in the same way. ie: chance of seeing solar system A is 1. I can't assign a probability of seeing Solar System B if I don't know about the possibility of accidents. But, If I know that there is a small chance of the accident you describe then the probabilities end up: Solar System A : 1 Solar System B : small chance. Note that the probability of seeing Solar System A doesn't end up (1-small chance) as far as I am concerned. Also note that in the MWI example, where small chances require a world of their own, the probabilities end up: Solar System A : 1 Solar System B : 1. So the probabilities work out slightly differently. I'm sure its an unpopular view but as I see it probabilities, however small, get rounded up to 1 in MWI scenarios. All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2014 20:45:39 +0100 On 20 Feb 2014, at 16:59, John Clark wrote:On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I can say today that I am the guy having answered your post of last week. But if duplicating chambers exist then there are lots of people who could say exactly the same thing, so more specificity is needed. Well, if it is about a prediction on 1p events, the specificity is simple: we have to interview all the copies. and neither is experiencing Helsinki right now, therefore Mr. he sees neither Washington nor Moscow. So, this is my first post to you, Bruno Marchal has certainly sent other posts to John Clark, but if duplicating chambers exist it's not at all clear who Mr. my is. On the contrary. It is always clear. In the 3p we are all copies, and in the 1p we are one of them.That is what they all say. They have they own permanent atomic memories like
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Russel This contradicts Kolmogorov's 4th axiom of probability, namely that the probability of the certain event = 1. Yes it does doesnt it. But thats ok. Im not convinced Kolmogorov had MWI in view when he dreamt up his axioms and Im too green behind the ears vis a vis probability axioms to know whether it matters much. But that 4th axiom does look like it might need revising. So maybe you can give meaning to your measure, but it aint probability as we known it. sure and thats fine by me. Particularly if these thought experiments are intended as analogies for MWI then I think probability loses meaning from both frog and bird's eye views. In fact, for any TofE where all possibilities are catered for probability is the first casualty. Its the logic of the situation that does violence to the concept of probability not the manner in which the plenitude is realized. What i think is unusual about my position is that I stand fast against uncertainty in frogs as well as birds. Thank goodness there are academics out there like Hilary Graves who think in tune with me, its an unusual position but not a unique one. All the best Chris. Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 16:19:47 +1100 From: li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 03:48:43AM +, chris peck wrote: My probabilities get assigned in the same way. ie: chance of seeing solar system A is 1. I can't assign a probability of seeing Solar System B if I don't know about the possibility of accidents. But, If I know that there is a small chance of the accident you describe then the probabilities end up: Solar System A : 1 Solar System B : small chance. Note that the probability of seeing Solar System A doesn't end up (1-small chance) as far as I am concerned. Also note that in the MWI example, where small chances require a world of their own, the probabilities end up: Solar System A : 1 Solar System B : 1. So the probabilities work out slightly differently. I'm sure its an unpopular view but as I see it probabilities, however small, get rounded up to 1 in MWI scenarios. This contradicts Kolmogorov's 4th axiom of probability, namely that the probability of the certain event = 1. In your probabilities, the probability of the certain event of seeing either solar system A or seeing solar system B, or something else entirely different again ends up being greater than or equal to 2. So maybe you can give meaning to your measure, but it aint probability as we known it. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Liz Let's also suppose you don't know which solar system you will be sent to, and that in fact the matter transmitter is supposed to send you to A or B with equal probability based on some quantum coin flip. But by accident it duplicates you, and sends you to both. This effectively conflates the comp and MWI versions IMHO, so you can't easily disentangle them in this thought experiment. An important aspect of step 3's experiment is that it depicts a determined result from 3p which is, allegedly, subject to uncertainty from 1p. Thats the big result right? That seems to get lost in your revision. You get 1p uncertainty but at the expense of 3p certainty. By introducing a 'quantum coin flip' you're loading the dice towards uncertainty. So I can't really say you shown an equivalence between step 3 and MWI. This is the same as saying that I will experience all possible futures in the MWI - but by the time I experience them, of course, the version of me in each branch will be different, and it always seems to me, retrospectively, as though I only experienced one outcome. Each duplicate will only experience one outcome. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. The problems occur when considering what the person duplicated will experience and then what probability he should assign to each outcome and that seems to me to depend on what identity criterion gets imposed. Its a consideration I've gone into at length and won't bore you with again. But I will say that where you think that what Bruno wants is just recognition that each duplicate sees one outcome, I think that he actually wants to show that 3p and 1p probability assignments would be asymmetric from the stand point of the person duplicated. Certainly for me he doesn't manage that. All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2014 07:56:14 +0100 On 22 Feb 2014, at 21:09, LizR wrote to Clark (with the above pap = the FPI of step 3): The above pap is only a small step in an argument (and it only reproduces a result obtained in the MWI, anyway). OK, but the MWI is a big thing, relying on another big thing: QM. The FPI assumes only the comp theory of mind, and extracts, as PGC indicates, a strong form of indeterminacy in a purely deterministic framework. That makes QM confirming a simple, (even according to Clark) but startling and counter-intuitive consequence of computationalism. That was new, and broke the common brain-mind identity thesis, and is basically still ignored by everyone, except on this list and my papers, 'course. Bruno 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Quentin then I can't see how you could still agree with many world interpretation and reject probability, that's not consistent... unless of course, you reject MWI. I definitely wouldn't say I accept MWI. But even so, not everyone who does accept it agrees that there is subjective uncertainty. So, I can accept MWI and reject the probability sums Bruno derives and be in good company. See here: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312136 All the best Chris. From: chris_peck...@hotmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 01:04:53 + Hi Liz Let's also suppose you don't know which solar system you will be sent to, and that in fact the matter transmitter is supposed to send you to A or B with equal probability based on some quantum coin flip. But by accident it duplicates you, and sends you to both. This effectively conflates the comp and MWI versions IMHO, so you can't easily disentangle them in this thought experiment. An important aspect of step 3's experiment is that it depicts a determined result from 3p which is, allegedly, subject to uncertainty from 1p. Thats the big result right? That seems to get lost in your revision. You get 1p uncertainty but at the expense of 3p certainty. By introducing a 'quantum coin flip' you're loading the dice towards uncertainty. So I can't really say you shown an equivalence between step 3 and MWI. This is the same as saying that I will experience all possible futures in the MWI - but by the time I experience them, of course, the version of me in each branch will be different, and it always seems to me, retrospectively, as though I only experienced one outcome. Each duplicate will only experience one outcome. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. The problems occur when considering what the person duplicated will experience and then what probability he should assign to each outcome and that seems to me to depend on what identity criterion gets imposed. Its a consideration I've gone into at length and won't bore you with again. But I will say that where you think that what Bruno wants is just recognition that each duplicate sees one outcome, I think that he actually wants to show that 3p and 1p probability assignments would be asymmetric from the stand point of the person duplicated. Certainly for me he doesn't manage that. All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2014 07:56:14 +0100 On 22 Feb 2014, at 21:09, LizR wrote to Clark (with the above pap = the FPI of step 3): The above pap is only a small step in an argument (and it only reproduces a result obtained in the MWI, anyway). OK, but the MWI is a big thing, relying on another big thing: QM. The FPI assumes only the comp theory of mind, and extracts, as PGC indicates, a strong form of indeterminacy in a purely deterministic framework. That makes QM confirming a simple, (even according to Clark) but startling and counter-intuitive consequence of computationalism. That was new, and broke the common brain-mind identity thesis, and is basically still ignored by everyone, except on this list and my papers, 'course. Bruno 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Quentin As I see from the abstract, he doesn't reject probability calculus, only the interpretation of it... I'll read the article later. Greaves rejects subjective uncertainty. With respect to spin up and spin down pay special attention to the point in section 4.1 where, in discussion of a thought experiment formally identical to Bruno's step 3, he argues: What ... should Alice expect to see? Here I invoke the following premise: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see. So, she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-up, and she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-down. One reason for MWI, is to explain the observed QM probabilities... No, MWI was devised in response to the measurement problem but in abandoning wave function collapse Everett ends up with a theory which is very parsimonious but entirely deterministic. How to then account for probability in a determinist framework has become the Achilles heel of MWI not its raison d'être. Since Everett there have been numerous attempts to smuggle an account of probability back into the theory, and more recent attempts: Deutsch, Wallace, Greaves etc., do that by abandoning the concept of subjective uncertainty altogether and replacing it with some kind of rational action principle. In otherwords, you can expect to see spin up and spin down, but you should act as if there was some objective bias towards one or the other. The approach comes complete with its own set of philosophical problems. The point is that how probability fits into MWI's determinist framework, or any TofE really, is still an open question. And to argue that must reject MWI if they reject Brunos probability sums is plain wrong. Im happy to find myself in the company of Oxford Dons like Deutsch and Greaves. your theory is disproven by fact... you never see constant spin up... which should be the case if the probability to measure spin up was one. See above. All the best Chris. From: da...@davidnyman.com Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 16:32:01 + Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 24 February 2014 15:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 24 Feb 2014, at 02:41, David Nyman wrote: On 24 February 2014 01:04, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: This is the same as saying that I will experience all possible futures in the MWI - but by the time I experience them, of course, the version of me in each branch will be different, and it always seems to me, retrospectively, as though I only experienced one outcome. Each duplicate will only experience one outcome. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. The problems occur when considering what the person duplicated will experience and then what probability he should assign to each outcome and that seems to me to depend on what identity criterion gets imposed. Its a consideration I've gone into at length and won't bore you with again. But I will say that where you think that what Bruno wants is just recognition that each duplicate sees one outcome, I think that he actually wants to show that 3p and 1p probability assignments would be asymmetric from the stand point of the person duplicated. Certainly for me he doesn't manage that. Correct me if I'm misremembering Chris, but I seem to recall proposing to you on a previous occasion that Hoyle's pigeon hole analogy can be a useful way of tuning intuitions about puzzles of this sort, although I appear to be the sole fan of the idea around here. Hoyle's idea is essentially a heuristic for collapsing the notions of identity, history and continuation onto the perspective of a single, universal observer. From this perspective, the situation of being faced with duplication is just a random selection from the class of all possible observer moments. Well, the just might be not that easy to define. If the universal observer is the universal machine, the probability to get a computational history involving windows or MacOS might be more probable than being me or you. But how would you remember that? I am not sure that the notion of observer moment makes sense, without a notion of scenario involving a net of computational relative states. I think the hypostases describe a universal person, composed from a universal (self) scientist ([]p), a universal knower ([]p p), an observer ([]p p), and a feeler ([]p p p)). But I would not say that this universal person (which exist in arithmetic and is associated with all relatively self-referential correct löbian number) will select among all observer moment. Well, perhaps eventually it will select all of them, if we can give some relevant sense to eventually in this context. And I suppose Hoyle's point is that if one imagines a logical serialisation of all such moments, its order must be inconsequential because of the intrinsic self-ordering
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Liz I can't see why the MWI's existing explanation of probability needs to have anything added. I can't see that MWI has an explanation of probability. Probability in the MWI is deduced from the results of measurements by an experimenter. Effectively, if they assume that they inhabit a non-branching universe, they will regard the proportion of times a measurement comes out one way (spin up say) as the probability of that result occurring. If they assume an MWI perspective, however, the probabilty of that outcome is a measure of the proportion of experimenters who will be found in the spin-up branch. Is there something wrong with that? It doesn't really address the issue. It doesn't address the question 'what can I expect to see'. Of course, I can say this set of future mes will inhabit a spin up branch and this set of future mes will inhabit a spin down branch. So, this proportion of future mes will see spin up and this portion will see spin down. Asked what I (present me) can expect to see: well I can expect to see spin up and spin down Asked to assign a probability to seeing either result I assign 1 to both. Theirs is a method of calculating frequencies of me seeing ups and downs but not probabilities of seeing up or down. All the best Chris. Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 13:30:48 +1300 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 25 February 2014 13:05, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Since Everett there have been numerous attempts to smuggle an account of probability back into the theory, and more recent attempts: Deutsch, Wallace, Greaves etc., do that by abandoning the concept of subjective uncertainty altogether and replacing it with some kind of rational action principle. In otherwords, you can expect to see spin up and spin down, but you should act as if there was some objective bias towards one or the other. The approach comes complete with its own set of philosophical problems. I can't see why the MWI's existing explanation of probability needs to have anything added. Probability in the MWI is deduced from the results of measurements by an experimenter. Effectively, if they assume that they inhabit a non-branching universe, they will regard the proportion of times a measurement comes out one way (spin up say) as the probability of that result occurring. If they assume an MWI perspective, however, the probabilty of that outcome is a measure of the proportion of experimenters who will be found in the spin-up branch. Is there something wrong with that? -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Quentin That's nonsense, The point wasn't whether you think its nonsense or not. I couldn't care less about that. we were arguing about whether there are Oxford Dons who adopt the same standpoint as me, and given your little outburst above I think you've just discovered that there are. And that they are publishing these ideas in respected and peer reviewed journals. Just to recap then: It is perfectly respectable to reject the notion of subjective uncertainty without abandoning MWI. Just as I said. and contrary to observed fact. I always wince when you throw that one out. How does one break it to the angriest member of a list that they are continually begging the question? David Deutsch does not reject probability... Sure he does, he swaps out the Born rule for rational decision theory (+ amendments to make it compatible with MWI). There isn't probability, but we should act 'as if' there was. Its what he's famous for, Quentin. or could you please show a quote where he does. Do your own homework, mate. I'm not your little quote monkey. I've kindly described to you what I think people like Deutsch and Wallace argue, I've supplied papers which you've refused to read. if you disagree you need display the same generosity and explain to me what you think they are arguing and how that is different. Waving your hands in the air demanding more and more to unceremoniously and uncritically ditch is no-ones idea of fun. All the best Chris. Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 20:26:52 +1300 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com In the MWI you do see spin up every time! ,,, if the definition of you has been changed to accommodate the fact that you've split. Or to put it another way, you (now) will become you (who sees spin up) and you (who sees spin down), which by then will be two different people. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Quentin I don't refuse to read them. You've cited *one* paper, I didn't have time to read it, I will this week. Ah so you dismiss things that you havent read then? Impressive! The abstract though did not reject probability calculus, only the interpretation of what it means. It is clear that in MWI setting probability is not about what happen and what does not, If I say that x will happen with 50% probability I certainly am talking about things happening or not happening and if it is clear that probability is not about that in MWI, then it is clear that probability in MWI is not about probability. but about frequency and measure... that doesn't render probability meaningless... proof is, as you always are in *one* world, your measure will follow the predicted distribution. So you're strategy is to try and semantically wriggle out of the claims you make? Pretend the words you use have a different meaning than they really do? f you want to assert thing and not back them up, well... But I did back up what I said. You couldn't be arsed to read the paper about Deutsch I offered, remember? You're the only one here refusing to back up claims. Perhaps you should give up on yourself? Here's Deutsh from the abstract of his paper: Quantum Theory of Probability and Decisions The probabilistic predictions of quantum theory are conventionally obtained from a special probabilistic axiom. But that is unnecessary because all the practical consequences of such predictions follow from the remaining, non- probabilistic, axioms of quantum theory, together with the non-probabilistic part of classical decision theory Read it carefully. It makes clear that he believes that all relevent predictions can be made from non probabilistic axioms. You're not going to turn around and argue that he meant 'probabilistic axioms' are you? And from the conclusion: No probabilistic axiom is required in quantum theory. A decision maker who believes only the non-probabilistic part of the theory, and is 'rational' in the sense defined by a strictly non-probabilistic restriction of classical decision theory, will make all decisions that depend on predicting the outcomes of measurements as if those outcomes were determined by stochastic processes, with probabilities given by axiom (1). (However, in other respects he will not behave as if he believed that stochastic processes occur. For instance if asked whether they occur he will certainly reply 'no', because the non-probabilistic axioms of quantum theory require the state to evolve in a continuous and deterministic way.) Now if you want to make the case that Deutsch 'does not reject probability' whilst he is insisting, indeed founding his reputation on the claim that 'no probabilistic axiom is required in quantum theory' be my guest. Im always up for a laugh. All the best Chris. From: allco...@gmail.com Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 10:43:33 +0100 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 2014-02-25 8:43 GMT+01:00 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com: Hi Quentin That's nonsense, The point wasn't whether you think its nonsense or not. I couldn't care less about that. we were arguing about whether there are Oxford Dons who adopt the same standpoint as me, and given your little outburst above I think you've just discovered that there are. And that they are publishing these ideas in respected and peer reviewed journals. Just to recap then: It is perfectly respectable to reject the notion of subjective uncertainty without abandoning MWI. Just as I said. and contrary to observed fact. I always wince when you throw that one out. How does one break it to the angriest member of a list that they are continually begging the question? David Deutsch does not reject probability... Sure he does, he swaps out the Born rule for rational decision theory (+ amendments to make it compatible with MWI). There isn't probability, but we should act 'as if' there was. Its what he's famous for, Quentin. o_O... he doesn't reject probability usage. or could you please show a quote where he does. Do your own homework, mate. I'm not your little quote monkey. Ok, I give up talking to you, if you want to assert thing and not back them up, well... I've kindly described to you what I think people like Deutsch and Wallace argue, I've supplied papers which you've refused to read. I don't refuse to read them. You've cited *one* paper, I didn't have time to read it, I will this week. The abstract though did not reject probability calculus, only the interpretation of what it means. It is clear that in MWI setting probability is not about what happen and what does not, but about frequency and measure... that doesn't render probability meaningless... proof is, as you always are in *one* world, your measure will follow the predicted distribution... so what's your point
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Liz In the MWI you do see spin up every time! ,,, if the definition of you has been changed to accommodate the fact that you've split. Well what definition of 'you' do you suggest we use? What is your criterion for identity over time? With regards to Bruno's steps, at this point I actually don't feel I need a criterion myself. What I have instead is the yes-doctor assumption. In other words, whatever criterion is adopted it must satisfy the condition that whenever I am copied, destroyed and reconstructed somewhere else, the reconstruction IS me. Otherwise, unless suicidal, I would never say yes to the doctor. This is why I used to argue Bruno was hoisted by his own petard because its his yes-doctor assumption that forces me to 'accommodate the fact that Ive split'. All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 19:21:00 +0100 On 25 Feb 2014, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: provide the algorithm of prediction. Why? What does that have to do with the price of eggs? FPI is about the feeling of self and prediction has nothing to do with it. FPI = first person indeterminacy of result of experience having two outcome due to digital self-duplication. W M has been refuted. You said that we have to interview all copies and I agree. After the interviews this is what we find: W has not refuted it. M has not refuted it. W M have confirmed it. In the 3-1 views. You miss this only by confusing the 3-1 view and the 1-view, Who's the 1-view? Each of them. Bruno 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Liz Assuming comp it appears to be the state(s) that could follow on from your current brain state via whatever transitions rules are allowed by - I assume - logical necessity. Perhaps Bruno can explain. let me ask a more round about question: you say that we see spin up every time 'if the definition of you has been changed to accommodate the fact that you've split' Changed from which definition? All the best Chris. Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 15:31:01 +1300 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 26 February 2014 15:16, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Liz In the MWI you do see spin up every time! ,,, if the definition of you has been changed to accommodate the fact that you've split. Well what definition of 'you' do you suggest we use? What is your criterion for identity over time? Assuming comp it appears to be the state(s) that could follow on from your current brain state via whatever transitions rules are allowed by - I assume - logical necessity. Perhaps Bruno can explain. With regards to Bruno's steps, at this point I actually don't feel I need a criterion myself. What I have instead is the yes-doctor assumption. In other words, whatever criterion is adopted it must satisfy the condition that whenever I am copied, destroyed and reconstructed somewhere else, the reconstruction IS me. Otherwise, unless suicidal, I would never say yes to the doctor. This is why I used to argue Bruno was hoist by his own petard because its his yes-doctor assumption that forces me to 'accommodate the fact that Ive split'. Indeed. I have mentioned at times that if you accept Yes Doctor the rest of comp follows. Which I realise isn't quite true, but that's the big leap. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Bruno Yes, it is the common confusion between 1 and 3 views. There is no such confusion. I haven't seen anyone confusing these. She should have said: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see SOMETHING definite. But, If she had of said that you'd both be wrong! And in the 1p it is obvious she will never see both outcome. You need to stop confusing what is seen with what can be expected to be seen. I think that's the source of many of your mistakes. She can expect to see each outcome without being committed to the view that either future self sees both. All that 1p,3p,3-1p,1-3p stuff is a rubbishy smoke screen to divert attention from the simple error you make here, isn't it? All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:26:02 +0100 On 25 Feb 2014, at 07:31, Quentin Anciaux wrote:Greaves rejects subjective uncertainty. With respect to spin up and spin down pay special attention to the point in section 4.1 where, in discussion of a thought experiment formally identical to Bruno's step 3, he argues: What ... should Alice expect to see? Here I invoke the following premise: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see. So, she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-up, and she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-down. That's nonsense, and contrary to observed fact. Yes, it is the common confusion between 1 and 3 views. She should have said: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see SOMETHING definite. And in the 1p it is obvious she will never see both outcome. Bruno 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Liz I meant changed from our everyday definition, in which we normally assume there is only one you, which is (or is at least associated with) your physical structure. Which we generally assume exists in one universe. We lose that definition just by stepping into the realm of MWI don't we? Its not as if we can have use of it in MWI until we want to argue that we will always see 'spin up'. MWI forces upon us either the complete abandonment of any notion of personal identity over time, or the equal distribution of it through all the branches in which 'we' appear. All the best Chris. From: allco...@gmail.com Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 07:28:53 +0100 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 2014-02-26 7:21 GMT+01:00 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com: Hi Bruno Yes, it is the common confusion between 1 and 3 views. There is no such confusion. I haven't seen anyone confusing these. She should have said: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see SOMETHING definite. But, If she had of said that you'd both be wrong! And in the 1p it is obvious she will never see both outcome. You need to stop confusing what is seen with what can be expected to be seen. I think that's the source of many of your mistakes. She can expect to see each outcome without being committed to the view that either future self sees both. All that 1p,3p,3-1p,1-3p stuff is a rubbishy smoke screen to divert attention from the simple error you make here, isn't it? She can make a probabilistic prediction as you can make in MWI... you're the one wanting to say probability are wrong, but only the interpretation of what is probability change in MWI (and duplication settings)... not the prediction... if you say it is totally useless, then you're ready to make a bet with me (as everything for your has equal probability of happening...) Quentin All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:26:02 +0100 On 25 Feb 2014, at 07:31, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Greaves rejects subjective uncertainty. With respect to spin up and spin down pay special attention to the point in section 4.1 where, in discussion of a thought experiment formally identical to Bruno's step 3, he argues: What ... should Alice expect to see? Here I invoke the following premise: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see. So, she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-up, and she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-down. That's nonsense, and contrary to observed fact. Yes, it is the common confusion between 1 and 3 views. She should have said: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see SOMETHING definite. And in the 1p it is obvious she will never see both outcome. Bruno 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups
RE: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
Hi Bruno Of course, and my point is that comp aggravates that problem, as only extends the indterminacy from a wave to arithmetic. Personally, I don't think it makes a difference what the underlying substrata of reality consists of, be it sums or some fundamental 'matter-esq' substance. What causes the problem is just the fact that in any TofE all outcomes are catered for. In such a theory genuine probabilities just vanish and subjective uncertainty can only exist as an epistemic measure. In versions of MWI it can exist when a person is unable to locate himself in a particular branch. ie. in earlier versions of Deutsch where infinite numbers of universes run in parallel one might not know whether one is in a spin up or spin down universe. Or in your step 3, subjective uncertainty can exist after duplication but before opening the door. These people are unable to locate and that lack of knowledge translates into subjective uncertainty. They can assign a probability value between 0 and 1 to possible outcomes. But crucially, where all relevant facts are known, the only values available must be 1 or 0. That just follows from the fact that all outcomes are catered for. And it seems to me that H guy in step 3 has all these relevent facts. So, whilst the duplicates before opening the door would assign 0.5 to M or W, prior to duplication H guy would assign 1. This is why I have accused you in the past of smuggling probabilities in from the future which strikes me as very fishy. OK, I appreciate the work, but they don't address the mind-body problem. Still less the computationalist form of that problem. But they get the closer view of the physical possible with respect to both comp, and the mathematical theory (comp+Theaetetus). Im not arguing that these people have a complete or even coherent theory. My guess is that they don't, I mean who does? It seems like everyone but me thinks they are in direct contact with the one and only truth, but its all just hubris. It might well be the case that your theory fairs better than theirs on the mind-body problem and much else besides but so what? They do far better when it comes to probability assignment and subjective uncertainty, imho. All the best Chris From: allco...@gmail.com Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 07:33:21 +0100 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 2014-02-26 7:31 GMT+01:00 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com: Hi Liz I meant changed from our everyday definition, in which we normally assume there is only one you, which is (or is at least associated with) your physical structure. Which we generally assume exists in one universe. We lose that definition just by stepping into the realm of MWI don't we? Its not as if we can have use of it in MWI until we want to argue that we will always see 'spin up'. MWI forces upon us either the complete abandonment of any notion of personal identity over time, or the equal distribution of it through all the branches in which 'we' appear. That's where your wrong... that would mean all branches have equal measure, where it must not, if MWI must be in accordance with QM. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/#PRPO All the best Chris. From: allco...@gmail.com Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 07:28:53 +0100 Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 2014-02-26 7:21 GMT+01:00 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com: Hi Bruno Yes, it is the common confusion between 1 and 3 views. There is no such confusion. I haven't seen anyone confusing these. She should have said: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see SOMETHING definite. But, If she had of said that you'd both be wrong! And in the 1p it is obvious she will never see both outcome. You need to stop confusing what is seen with what can be expected to be seen. I think that's the source of many of your mistakes. She can expect to see each outcome without being committed to the view that either future self sees both. All that 1p,3p,3-1p,1-3p stuff is a rubbishy smoke screen to divert attention from the simple error you make here, isn't it? She can make a probabilistic prediction as you can make in MWI... you're the one wanting to say probability are wrong, but only the interpretation of what is probability change in MWI (and duplication settings)... not the prediction... if you say it is totally useless, then you're ready to make a bet with me (as everything for your has equal probability of happening...) Quentin All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:26:02 +0100 On 25 Feb 2014, at 07:31, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Greaves rejects subjective uncertainty. With respect to spin up
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Edgar It occurs as fragmentary spacetimes are created by quantum events and then merged via shared quantum events. There can be no deterministic rules for aligning separate spacetime fragments thus nature is forced to make those alignments randomly. Far out, man! Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 10:33:25 +1300 Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 27 February 2014 02:49, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: I came upon an interesting passage in Our Mathematical Universe, starting on page 194, which I think members of this list might appreciate: Yes, a subset of me certainly does. Thanks. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
If you repeated the cloning experiment from Figure 8.3 many times and wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. There's something strikes me as very strange about this idea. Tegmark's method is just a means of writing down binary sequences. Being strict, already with binary sequences just 4 digits long, only 37.5% of those contain half zeros. This drops the longer the sequences get. So, with sequences 6 digits long, only 31.25% contain half zeros. With sequences 8 digits long only 27% and with 16 digits only about 19%. If his experiment continued for a year, (365 digits) many people would find that either room 1 or room 0 was dominating strongly. For these people a change in room would seem very odd, a glitch in the matrix that wouldn't be of any great concern vis a vis prediction once 'normality' kicked back in the following night. For others, a change in room would occur at regular intervals and would seem very predictable. There would be the guy who changed room every night. There would be all the guys whose room changed every night except for the one time when it stayed the same. A little glitch is all. In truth, the longer you continued the game and the more people got involved the less chance a person would have of finding room assignment random at all. There would be increasingly few people willing to bet 50/50 on a particular room assignment. Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 17:13:23 +1300 Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Hello, dear, looking for a bit of multi-sense realism? On 2 March 2014 16:35, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: heh heh heh I love this place. It's like walking through an eccentric street market where traders call out their wares GETCHYOUR P-TIME 2 for 1 logico-computational really real structure today only Assuming comp only, that's right comp only. Theology but done like science. Madam you are ugly but I will be sober in the morning. You there, you reek of not-comp, get lost. Ah sir, did you like the dreams? Same again? GETCHOR P-TIME..,. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Naah. The *fractional* deviation from 50/50 keeps going down as 1/sqrt(n). You'll have to explain further because it keeps going down. And at 4 digits its already well below 50% And at 16 digits its already below 20%. If you're generous and say at 16 steps half the people will experience 'roughly' 50% ones or zeros, already 50% will have one or the other dominating. That seems to me to be a far cry from what Tegmark describes. Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 23:43:09 -0800 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 On 3/2/2014 11:36 PM, chris peck wrote: If you repeated the cloning experiment from Figure 8.3 many times and wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. There's something strikes me as very strange about this idea. Tegmark's method is just a means of writing down binary sequences. Being strict, already with binary sequences just 4 digits long, only 37.5% of those contain half zeros. This drops the longer the sequences get. So, with sequences 6 digits long, only 31.25% contain half zeros. With sequences 8 digits long only 27% and with 16 digits only about 19%. If his experiment continued for a year, (365 digits) many people would find that either room 1 or room 0 was dominating strongly. For these people a change in room would seem very odd, a glitch in the matrix that wouldn't be of any great concern vis a vis prediction once 'normality' kicked back in the following night. For others, a change in room would occur at regular intervals and would seem very predictable. There would be the guy who changed room every night. There would be all the guys whose room changed every night except for the one time when it stayed the same. A little glitch is all. In truth, the longer you continued the game and the more people got involved the less chance a person would have of finding room assignment random at all. There would be increasingly few people willing to bet 50/50 on a particular room assignment. Naah. The *fractional* deviation from 50/50 keeps going down as 1/sqrt(n). 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Liz 0001 0010 0011 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 Of which I'm fairly sure half the digits are 0 and half 1! What am I missing here? If you concatenate all those strings together you'll get a bigger string in which the proportion of 1s to 0s is exactly 50/50. And that will always be the case no matter how long the individual bit strings are. If they are 8 bits long then you'll have 256 individual strings. When concatenated together the proportion will be exactly 50/50. But it looks to me like you're misconstruing Tegmark's method here. Its each individual string that matters. What is the proportion of 1s to 0s in , or in 1011, or 1100 etc. Because each string represents a sequence of room - wake ups. In your example, 16 people live through room-wake ups over 4 nights. Each person's experience represented by an individual string. Even over 4 nights you'll see, just by counting, that the number of occasions where the proportion of 1s to 0s is 50% is 6. Not 8. Not half. How does that square with his claim that almost all people will experience a 50/50 distribution of 0s to 1s? not even half will. Now as the individual strings get longer, as more nights are encountered, that proportion goes down. Not up. When individual strings are 16 bits long, there are 65,536 combinations (people). Of whom less than 20% experience a 50/50 split of 1s and 0s over those 16 nights. Now Brent, and Bruno with customary obtuseness, correctly point out that: 1) Tegmark talks about 'roughly half', so not an exact 50/50 split. 2) if you take that into account, then you can get a figure approaching 'almost all'. in the 16 bit example, if you include strings where there are 7 ones (or zeros) and you take strings where there are 6 ones (or zeros) then about 78% of people will experience 'roughly' 50% ones or zeros. Ofcourse now we're in a situation where personal opinion rears its head. Is 78% 'almost all'? Is 37% (6/16) 'roughly half'? Right and wrong don't really preside over these kinds of opinions, but 37% doesn't look like 50% to me. In any case both Bruno and Brent miss the bigger picture: Consider the following 16 bit strings: 1010101010101010 - does that look random? how about 0101010101010101 how about this: 1100110011001100 Seems to me Tegmark is confusing a roughly equal distribution of 1s and 0s with apparent unpredictability. A better approach considers irregularity of change in 1s and 0s. So where there is irregular change : 010001010011 it looks unpredictable, but where change is regular : it doesn't. The proportion of 1s and 0s is irrelevant. So has Tegmark convinced me that in his thought experiment I would assign 50/50 probability of seeing one or the other room each iteration? Not really. I'm sure Tegmark's world won't be shaken too much by any of this, I'm even more certain that I have something wrong. Though it does seem to have sent Bruno running for cover behind his little sums. So perhaps I am on to something All the best Chris. Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 11:59:05 +1300 Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com I should also mention that in the quote, Max says that you wake up in room 0 or room 1, so if we WERE omitting leading zeroes, we'd write 11... ! Shurely shome mishtake! -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Liz I'm not sure I follow. Me neither. wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. there would be no 'about' it were your interpretation right, Liz. It would be all the time, exactly 50%. Hes saying that zeros occur about 50%of the time in the zeros and ones you have written down. That corresponds to the individual bit strings. Not the entire collection of them. I guess the sloppy phrasing is he implies 0s happen half the time in most sequences? I suspect its sloppy interpretation rather than sloppy phrasing that implies that. I don't know if that is true (it's true for 6 of the 16 sequences above) 6/16 isn't half is it? I measured 1 divided by 2 just now and it still seems to come out as 0.5 here. or if it becomes more true (or almost true) with longer sequences. Maybe a mathematician can enlighten me? I wrote a little program Liz that collects together all the bit strings that can be made from 16 bits. Then it counts the number of 1s and 0s in each one. It has a little counter that goes up by one every time there are 8 zeros. there are 65536 combinations. 12870 of them have 8 zeros. 12870 / 65536 * 100 = 19%. 6/16*100 = 37% I don't know about you but 19, being less than 37, suggests to me that the percentage is going down. But ofcourse ask a mathematician if you're not certain of that yourself. I admit Max seems a little slapdash in how he phrases things in the chapters I've read so far, presumably because he's trying to make his subject matter seem more accessible. Yeah, which is preferable to people with similar ideas being slap dash in order to make them less accessible. Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 22:13:28 -0600 Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 From: jasonre...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 9:09 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: I came upon an interesting passage in Our Mathematical Universe, starting on page 194, which I think members of this list might appreciate: It gradually hit me that this illusion of randomness business really wasn't specific to quantum mechanics at all. Suppose that some future technology allows you to be cloned while you're sleeping, and that your two copies are placed in rooms numbered 0 and 1 (Figure 8.3). When they wake up, they'll both feel that the room number they read is completely unpredictable and random. If in the future, it becomes possible for you to upload your mind to a computer, then what I'm saying here will feel totally obvious and intuitive to you, since cloning yourself will be as easy as making a copy of your software. If you repeated the cloning experiment from Figure 8.3 many times and wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. In other words, causal physics will produce the illusion of randomness from your subjective viewpoint in any circumstance where you're being cloned. The fundamental reason that quantum mechanics appears random even though the wave function evolves deterministically is that the Schrodinger equation can evolve a wavefunction with a single you into one with clones of you in parallel universes. So how does it feel when you get cloned? It feels random! And every time something fundamentally random appears to happen to you, which couldn't have been predicted even in principle, it's a sign that you've been cloned. While reading, do you get a sense that he points towards how this might potentially weaken digital physics/functionalism in their strong sense? I haven't gotten that sense yet, but I am only about half way through. That digital physics implies comp, which implies vast non computable parts of reality, which rules out stronger forms of interpreting digital physics/functionalism? Because in this quoted passage he just references the teleportation ambiguity, as many have. I'd want to know if he dug a bit deeper. PGC There are some leaps he seems unwilling to make, like QTI. Yet, if he thinks all mathematical structures exist, and if he believes in the CTM, then shouldn't he also believe every conscious state has at least some computational continuation somewhere in this infinite reality that contains everything? Jason -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
I'm not reading Max's book, so I don't know exactly what he said, Im reading the quote Jason kindly provided and responding to exactly what Tegmark said. but using FPI as in Everett QM and writing down which of two equally likely events you actually experience is an example of bernoulli trials. and the figures I've been stating reflect bernoulli trials precisely. The proportion of 1s and 0s both converge to 1/2 in probability. but in doing so call in to question definitions of 'about' 'roughly' and 'almost all'. But then you haven't read the Tegmark quote so you won't be able to add anything substantive about that. It is irrelevant that the proportion of subsequences that have exactly equally 1s and 0s goes down. Whats irrelevant is the use of proportion of 1s and 0s in determining 'apparent randomness'. It doesn't. Which is my point. The figures for exact proportions were just my arse about tit way of getting there. But still, even though I seemed to get there on my tod, at least I know what a Bernoulli trial is now. Thanks for that. Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 21:43:29 -0800 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 I'm not reading Max's book, so I don't know exactly what he said, but using FPI as in Everett QM and writing down which of two equally likely events you actually experience is an example of bernoulli trials. The proportion of 1s and 0s both converge to 1/2 in probability. This is exactly the way prediction of probabilities are evaluated experimentally. It is irrelevant that the proportion of subsequences that have exactly equally 1s and 0s goes down. Brent On 3/3/2014 8:32 PM, chris peck wrote: Hi Liz I'm not sure I follow. Me neither. wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. there would be no 'about' it were your interpretation right, Liz. It would be all the time, exactly 50%. Hes saying that zeros occur about 50%of the time in the zeros and ones you have written down. That corresponds to the individual bit strings. Not the entire collection of them. I guess the sloppy phrasing is he implies 0s happen half the time in most sequences? I suspect its sloppy interpretation rather than sloppy phrasing that implies that. I don't know if that is true (it's true for 6 of the 16 sequences above) 6/16 isn't half is it? I measured 1 divided by 2 just now and it still seems to come out as 0.5 here. or if it becomes more true (or almost true) with longer sequences. Maybe a mathematician can enlighten me? I wrote a little program Liz that collects together all the bit strings that can be made from 16 bits. Then it counts the number of 1s and 0s in each one. It has a little counter that goes up by one every time there are 8 zeros. there are 65536 combinations. 12870 of them have 8 zeros. 12870 / 65536 * 100 = 19%. 6/16*100 = 37% I don't know about you but 19, being less than 37, suggests to me that the percentage is going down. But ofcourse ask a mathematician if you're not certain of that yourself. I admit Max seems a little slapdash in how he phrases things in the chapters I've read so far, presumably because he's trying to make his subject matter seem more accessible. Yeah, which is preferable to people with similar ideas being slap dash in order to make them less accessible. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Jason/Gabriel Thanks for the posts. They were both really clear. I can see that it was a mistake to hedge my bets on exact figures and also, given Jason's comments, to think that seemingly regular sequences were quite common. I do maintain that proportions of roughly 50/50 splits are a spurious measure of 'seemingly random' though and that irregularity of change is a better one. There also seems to me to be a big difference between Tegmark's game as described in the quote below, and flicking coins. Tegmark's game is a process guaranteed to generate (over 4 iterations) 16 unique and exhaustive combinations of 0s and 1s (heads or tails). If 16 people were to flick a coin 4 times and write down the results there is only a low probability that the resulting set would map on to that generated by Tegmarks game. There is fair chance there would be some repetition. Jason, you say: Even if your pattern were: 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1, you still have no better than a 50% chance of predicting the next bit, so despite the coincidental pattern the sequence is still random. I disagree here. In Tegmarks game you know a particular outcome is not exclusive and that you'll have two successors who get one and the other. The next outcome is (01010101010 AND 01010101011) not (01010101010 XOR 01010101011). Now this might influence how you bet. If you care about your successors you might refuse to make a bet because you know one successor will lose. If we rolled dice rather than flicked coins and were to bet on getting anything but a 6, in a modified Tegmark game we might still refuse to bet knowing that one successor would certainly lose. Its a bet we almost certainly would take if we were rolling die in a classical world without clones. More dramatically, if you play Russian roulette in Everettian Multiverse you always shoot someone in the head. Crossing the road becomes deeply immoral because vast numbers of successors trip and get run down by trucks. A final confusion: Does anything ever seem 'apparently random' in a Marchalian/Tegmarkian game? Given that you know outcomes are generated by a mechanical process and given you know exactly what the following set of outcomes will be, how can they seem random? Even 100010110011 isn't looking very random anymore. :( Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 10:21:47 +1300 Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 6 March 2014 06:45, Gabriel Bodeen gabebod...@gmail.com wrote: Brent was right but the explanation could use some examples to show you what's happening. The strangeness that you noticed occurs because you're looking at cases where the proportion is *exactly* 50%. binopdf(2,4,0.5)=0.375 binopdf(3,6,0.5)=0.3125 binopdf(4,8,0.5)=0.2374 binopdf(8,16,0.5)=0.1964 binopdf(1000,2000,0.5)=0.0178 binopdf(1e6,2e6,0.5)=0.0006 Instead let's look at cases which are in some range close to 50%. binocdf(5,8,0.5)-binocdf(3,8,0.5)=0.4922 binocdf(10,16,0.5)-binocdf(6,16,0.5)=0.6677 binocdf(520,1000,0.5)-binocdf(480,1000,0.5)=0.7939 binocdf(1001000,2e6,0.5)-binocdf(999000,2e6,0.5)=0.8427 binocdf(15,2e9,0.5)-binocdf(5,2e9,0.5)=0.9747 Basically, as you flip a coin more and more times, you get a growing number of distinct proportions of heads and tails that can come up, so any exact proportion becomes less likely. But at the same time, as you flip the coin more and more times, the distribution of proportions starts to cluster more and more tightly around the expected value. So for tests when you do two million flips of a fair coin, only about 0.06% of the tests come up exactly 50% heads and 50% tails, but 84.27% of the tests come up between 49.95% and 50.05%. Thank you, that's exactly what I was attempting to say in my cack-handed way. (And it is almost certainly what Max intended to say.) -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Bruno The question is: can you refute this. To my own satisfaction? Yes. To your satisfaction? Apparantly not. Though perhaps you have an ideological agenda and are just trying very hard not to be refuted? And for the UDA, you don't need the 50%. You need only to assess the indeterminacy, and its invariance for the changes described in the next steps. By your own admission your steps are dumbed down for morons like me and display a lack of rigour. Perhaps your book might help? If I don't buy my little 2 year old a treat this month maybe I can afford it. Are there an awful lot of sums? I hate sums. Well its your call Bruno, should I treat my son or buy your book? What is you talk about the step 4? It asks if the way to evaluate the P(W) and the P(M) changes if some delay of reconstitution is introduced in W, or in M. It doesn't change as far as I can see. Its still P(1) for both. I'll tell you what, I'll have another look at step 7. see if I can make head or tails of it the fifth or sixth time aroundLast time I got stuck at the floating pen. Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 14:05:21 +1300 Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Brent, could you please reply to Edgar? He is, I'm sure, eagerly awaiting your response so he can unleash a torrent of carefully thought out arguments which will cover every point you've made. (As indeed am I.) On 1 March 2014 13:46, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Brent, Are you addressing that question to me? You are responding to a post by Liz talking about your theory. If so I'll be glad to answer. On Friday, February 28, 2014 6:14:42 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 2/28/2014 2:43 PM, LizR wrote: If anyone is looking for the source of quantum randomness I've already provided an explanation. It occurs as fragmentary spacetimes are created by quantum events and then merged via shared quantum events. There can be no deterministic rules for aligning separate spacetime fragments thus nature is forced to make those alignments randomly. OK, I'll bite. Show us the maths and the experts can see how it stacks up against Everett et al. But sadly no one on this group is interested in quantum theory, only relativity, and far out philosophies such as 'comp'. On the contrary, I am interested in your theory of quantum randomness IF you can flesh it out. For example how do you describe a Stern-Gerlach experiment, a Vaidman no-interaction measurment, an EPR experiment, Bose-Einstein condensate,...? -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Bruno Refuting means to the satisfaction of everyone. pfft! let me put it this way. There are a bunch of perspectives on subjective uncertainty available. Yours and Greave's to mention just two. They are mutually incompatible and neither of them has been refuted to the 'satisfaction of everyone'; consequently whether something has or hasn't been doesn't tells us much. Refuting something to the 'satisfaction of everyone' is extraordinarily rare in the scientific and philosophical community; less still the wider community. Has Astrology been refuted to the satisfaction of everyone? You're also aware, im sure, that even Darwin's theory, strictly speaking, has been refuted. That the theory of inheritance he employed was in conflict with his wider principles of selection. His theory was internally incoherent and he never spotted it. What does that tell us? That theories have extraordinary value even when they ought to have been 'refuted to the satisfaction of everyone'. This is a good and bad thing. Even if I hadn't refuted your theory to my own satisfaction, it wouldn't lead me to accept it. On the other hand, just because a theory has been (or ought to have been) refuted by everyone wouldn't lead me to reject it entirely either. It means I can have refuted your conclusions in step 3 to my own satisfaction, and still be interested in comp. Hurray! Surely that will make you happy? Have you ever read Putnam's 'on the corroboration of theories'? It was pivotal in my extremely stunted intellectual growth. In it he discusses the impossibility of ever refuting any theory. You're talking to someone who hasn't placed any currency in refutation for over twenty years. All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 19:32:32 +0100 On 06 Mar 2014, at 16:40, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:On Thursday, March 6, 2014 1:52:56 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 05 Mar 2014, at 18:45, Gabriel Bodeen wrote: Brent was right but the explanation could use some examples to show you what's happening. The strangeness that you noticed occurs because you're looking at cases where the proportion is *exactly* 50%. binopdf(2,4,0.5)=0.375 binopdf(3,6,0.5)=0.3125 binopdf(4,8,0.5)=0.2374 binopdf(8,16,0.5)=0.1964 binopdf(1000,2000,0.5)=0.0178 binopdf(1e6,2e6,0.5)=0.0006 Instead let's look at cases which are in some range close to 50%. binocdf(5,8,0.5)-binocdf(3,8,0.5)=0.4922 binocdf(10,16,0.5)-binocdf(6,16,0.5)=0.6677 binocdf(520,1000,0.5)-binocdf(480,1000,0.5)=0.7939 binocdf(1001000,2e6,0.5)-binocdf(999000,2e6,0.5)=0.8427 binocdf(15,2e9,0.5)-binocdf(5,2e9,0.5)=0.9747 Basically, as you flip a coin more and more times, you get a growing number of distinct proportions of heads and tails that can come up, so any exact proportion becomes less likely. But at the same time, as you flip the coin more and more times, the distribution of proportions starts to cluster more and more tightly around the expected value. So for tests when you do two million flips of a fair coin, only about 0.06% of the tests come up exactly 50% heads and 50% tails, but 84.27% of the tests come up between 49.95% and 50.05%. Good. So you agree with step 3? What about step 4? (*). I am interested to know. the FPI is just the elementary statistics of the bernouilly épreuve (in french statistics), and that is pretty obvious when you grasp the definitions given of 1p and 3p. Bruno (*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html Did you mean to address me, or did you mean to address Chris? I don't object to any step in UDA. It seems internally consistent and plausible to me. I'm unsure what level of confidence I would assign to it being actually true, although my gut feeling is in the vicinity of 25%. A reasoning is 100% valid, or invalid. Do you mean that the truth of the premise, comp, is in the vicinity of 25%. making perhaps its neoplatonist consequences in the vicinity of 25% ? I will make a confession: for me comp only oscillates between the false and the unbelievable. I have much formal logic to learn before I have any meaningful opinion about AUDA. OK. Fair enough to say. I often come back to zero, so you might enjoy a ride eventually :) Bruno -Gabe -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. 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
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Bruno ou cannot say something like this. It is unscientific in the extreme. You must say at which step rigor is lacking. I think you're missing the fact that I was poking fun at a comment you made to Liz. Don't worry about it. You make vague negative proposition containing precise error in elementary statistics. It wouldn't be at all unusual for me to make mistakes in sums, but that 'error in elementary statistics' is not seen as one by prof's at Oxford, which gives me great confidence that Im on to something and that the error is yours . Then you omit, like Clark, the simple and obvious fact that if in H you predict P(M) = 1, then the guy in Moscow will understand that the prediction was wrong. The question you pose to H in step 3 is badly formed. You ask H, 'what is the probability that you will see M' but this question clearly presupposes the idea that there will be only one unique successor of H. The only question that is really fitting in the experimental set up is: what is the probability that either of your two successors sees M. Or, if you want to keep the questions phrased entirely in 1p then the correct question is: what is the probability that (you in M will see M) and (you in W will see W)? And the answer to that *is* simple and obvious. It is 1. It seems to me this is at the crux of your argument with Clark. The question you phrase in fact implies that only one successor will embody your sense of self, your 'I'ness. 'What is the probability that you will see x': there is no recognition of duplication in the question, and so pronouns become altogether confusing and all participants begin to wonder who in fact is who. ike Clark, you confine yourself in the 3-1 views, without ever listening to what the duplicated persons say. Not at all. Its just that when you ask the right question it doesn't make any difference whether you look at it from the objective or subjective view. The probabilities work out the same either way. And in fact, you can only 'listen to what the duplicated persons say' by adopting some kind of 3p view in my opinion. H has to fly out of his body into a birds eye view of the process, swoop down on both W and M guys, dream their 1p views, fly back and integrate their answers into his own sums. Whats that? 1-3-1-3-1-3-1p? If we're going to be serious about 3-1 confusions then thats a hugely contorted confusion of the lot. So if you have a refutation of the point made, you have still to provide it. On the contrary, the refutation is there and you haven't yet understood it, less still rebutted it. All the best Chris. From: chris_peck...@hotmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3 Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 23:33:15 + Hi Bruno Refuting means to the satisfaction of everyone. pfft! let me put it this way. There are a bunch of perspectives on subjective uncertainty available. Yours and Greave's to mention just two. They are mutually incompatible and neither of them has been refuted to the 'satisfaction of everyone'; consequently whether something has or hasn't been doesn't tells us much. Refuting something to the 'satisfaction of everyone' is extraordinarily rare in the scientific and philosophical community; less still the wider community. Has Astrology been refuted to the satisfaction of everyone? You're also aware, im sure, that even Darwin's theory, strictly speaking, has been refuted. That the theory of inheritance he employed was in conflict with his wider principles of selection. His theory was internally incoherent and he never spotted it. What does that tell us? That theories have extraordinary value even when they ought to have been 'refuted to the satisfaction of everyone'. This is a good and bad thing. Even if I hadn't refuted your theory to my own satisfaction, it wouldn't lead me to accept it. On the other hand, just because a theory has been (or ought to have been) refuted by everyone wouldn't lead me to reject it entirely either. It means I can have refuted your conclusions in step 3 to my own satisfaction, and still be interested in comp. Hurray! Surely that will make you happy? Have you ever read Putnam's 'on the corroboration of theories'? It was pivotal in my extremely stunted intellectual growth. In it he discusses the impossibility of ever refuting any theory. You're talking to someone who hasn't placed any currency in refutation for over twenty years. All the best Chris. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 19:32:32 +0100 On 06 Mar 2014, at 16:40, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:On Thursday, March 6, 2014 1:52:56 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 05 Mar 2014, at 18:45, Gabriel Bodeen wrote: Brent was right but the explanation could use some examples to show you what's happening. The strangeness that you noticed occurs because you're looking at cases where
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Bruno With respect to the UDA, graves and me are just using different vocabulary. Really? the last time I quoted her: What ... should Alice expect to see? Here I invoke the following premise: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see. So, she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-up, and she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-down. Quentin said: That's nonsense, and contrary to observed fact. And you agreed with Quentin: Yes, it is the common confusion between 1 and 3 views. Are you saying you now actually agree with Greaves and that assigning probability 1 to both outcomes is in fact correct? Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2014 14:40:53 -0800 From: ghib...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 On Tuesday, March 4, 2014 3:49:21 AM UTC, Liz R wrote:I'm not sure I follow. Tegmark said If you repeated the cloning experiment from Figure 8.3 many times and wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. Did Tegmark really say that? I don't believe it. And he just deemed tell us the nature of mathematics. Of course they look random - they are hexadecimal translations. or very different bases anyway. Of course the bloody average 1's about 50% of the time, as well as 0's. It's binary. Which works by flipping. That seems to me to be correct. If you do the experiment 4 times you get the sequences I typed out before, except I seem to have accidentally doubled up! The correct sequences should read: 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 Depending on how you decide something looks random, I'd say quite a few of those sequences do. And 0s do occur 50% of the time overall, for sure. binary relates to other bases simple if the other base is in the series 2^n, and arithmetically otherwise. For example, convert the following to hexadecimal without a calculator, in two steps only. 1101101100111111 it's 2^n so easy peasy. Just copy the sequence below, then with your cursor break the copy up into sets of four. 1101 1010 0001 0011 1100 0011 the right to left column value of binary goes 1,2,4,8 so putting it round the same way as the binary that's 8, 4, 2, 1. So if you have 1101 and you want to convert to hex, you jusmultiply the value in each binary column by 1 or 2 or 4, or 8 depending on its position. So 1101 would be 1x8 + 1x4 + 0x2 + 1x1 = 15 in decimal which counts in 10's. But hex counts in 16's, replacing everything aftter 10 with a letter of the alphabet, thus 15d -- Eh I just taught a lot of people how to suck eggs right there. But maybe there was ONE person that wasn't 100% and is glad to now know hex :o) I guess the sloppy phrasing is he implies 0s happen half the time in most sequences? I don't know if that is true (it's true for 6 of the 16 sequences above) or if it becomes more true (or almost true) with longer sequences. Maybe a mathematician can enlighten me? Yeah it's basically a load of bollocks any much significance as it's an archetype of the base and all the translations intrinsic in most implementations. Ask why the pattern doesn't remain constant through the bases, allowing for translation. I admit Max seems a little slapdash in how he phrases things in the chapters I've read so far, presumably because he's trying to make his subject matter seem more accessible. ...I will describe..[reality from math] the greatest most large infinity of all the others to date is what sticks in my mind. First time I read that, it put me on the floor. -- 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Bruno With respect to the UDA, graves and me are just using different vocabulary. Really? the last time I quoted her: What ... should Alice expect to see? Here I invoke the following premise: whatever she knows she will see, she should expect (with certainty!) to see. So, she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-up, and she should (with certainty) expect to see spin-down. But that can only be a 3-1 description. She handles the 1p by a maximization of the interests of the copies, and that is equivalent with the FPI, without naming it. Funnily enough Bruno, if I was opportunistic I would just about accept that. I mean personally, I would argue that the vocabulary used is identical between you and Greaves and she explicitly denies your probability distribution from the first person perspective. But a bigger problem for you raises its head if I put that to one side. if, as you claim, there is no substantive difference between your theory and Greaves' just because she has some other mechanism of deriving the bare quantities you want, then you may as well say that there is only a difference in terminology between your theory and any other interpretation of QM. After all they all deliver 0.5 by some now irrelevant metric too. You've just relugated your theory to the purely metaphysical. You're tacitly admitting that all these theories are just re-skins of the same underlying engine with bugger all to choose between them. In a way that is something that I have felt for a while. Everettian QM does not improve upon QM + collapse in the way say relativity improves on Newtonian physics. There is no concomitant improvement in predictive capability on offer. Its a purely theoretical change intended to smooth out conceptual difficulties but it can only do that by delivering further difficulties of its own. All your theories are scientifically irrelevant. Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2014 11:32:08 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 On 3/9/2014 12:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Mar 2014, at 06:16, meekerdb wrote: On 3/7/2014 8:26 PM, LizR wrote: On 8 March 2014 08:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 3/7/2014 1:24 AM, LizR wrote: On 7 March 2014 18:29, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 3/6/2014 9:15 PM, Jason Resch wrote: A related question is, is there any such thing as true randomness at all? Or is every case of true randomness an instance of FPI? Or is FPI just a convoluted way to pretend there isn't true randomness? If one assumes QM and the MWI are correct then it isn't pretending, True; but I don't assume that. Since your original statement above only makes sense in some context - which you haven't revealed, as far as I can tell - perhaps you could tell us what you are assuming? I'm not assuming anything, I'm just pointing out that one could assume something different than QM and MWI. For instance, start with MWI but then suppose that at each branching only one instance of you continues. Doesn't that accord with all
RE: The way the future was
you are saying that something musically significant happened here Something significant happened to pop music for sure. In 1977 the charts were dominated by David Soul, Rod Stewart, Brotherhood of Man, Leo Sayer, Hot Chocolate, Boney M, Shawaddywaddy and Billy Ocean. Daddy Cool. Rockin' All Over the World and Yes Sir, I can Boogie. And then: Dragged on a table in factory Illegitimate place to be In a packet in a lavatory Die little baby screaming Body screaming fucking bloody mess Not an animal It's an abortion Body! I'm not animal Mummy! I'm not an abortion It kind of hits you in the face with the reality as experienced by the dispossessed and disenfranchised, but in a very immediate and visceral way. Its far more gut wrenching and confrontational than iggy pop, or the clash or any other punk band I know of. Most people are so offended someone is singing about abortion that they miss the fact that the song is an argument between the unborn child and the mother. For a spotty teenager that's pretty brainy lyrically and very surreal. I don't think it was ever matched until the Pixies really. I stand by the Pistols. True, Rotten is a twat now. He wasn't then though. From: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Subject: Re: The way the future was Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 21:03:43 +1100 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 4:30 am, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: Although I have very little good to say about Malcolm McLaren he did arguably launch a whole new musical experience with the Sex Pistols, a type of music which had until then only been underground (Rezillos? B52s ?) but bubbled to the surface when Rotten et al appeared on prime time TV swearing away. The world was never the same. I lived through it and was even more the same after it. With all due respect, you are saying that something musically significant happened here but I only ever heard racket and rubbish from Johnny Rotten. I mean, he called himself rotten for a reason. He was. He was musically as rotten as festering shit. What was musically significant about the Sex Pistols? I mean, concerning the actual elements of music. Things like pitch, rhythm, harmony, melody - all that core stuff. His music shows no skill whatsoever at those things. But then he didn't even write his own music because he was too off his dial most of the time. None of this precludes the distinct possibility that you, as I myself still do, find vastly entertaining, listening to the Sex Pistols very occasionally. I often do listen to music I really hate if only to realise why in ever more glory that I love the music I really do love... Feel free to hate this post creatively in some way. McClaren would have. Kim -- 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: The way the future was
whoever put Hendrix as a proto punk should on the same basis add Cream and even the Stones. (At this rate everyone will be in on it...) Rick Astley ... post punk rocker... Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 07:45:50 +1300 Subject: Re: The way the future was From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com I have 4 pistols tracks in my very large and eclectic MP3 music collection, along with many others generally called punk.John Lydon also gave me my all time favourite headline, Sex pistol attacks New Zealand butter. I even managed to turn it into a crossword clue - Enthusiastically attack butter (4) ...but anyway, yes, I like the Pistols some of the time, even if they were McLaren's boy band really. PS whoever put Hendrix as a proto punk should on the same basis add Cream and even the Stones. (At this rate everyone will be in on it...) On 11 March 2014 02:49, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: you are saying that something musically significant happened here Something significant happened to pop music for sure. In 1977 the charts were dominated by David Soul, Rod Stewart, Brotherhood of Man, Leo Sayer, Hot Chocolate, Boney M, Shawaddywaddy and Billy Ocean. Daddy Cool. Rockin' All Over the World and Yes Sir, I can Boogie. And then: Dragged on a table in factory Illegitimate place to be In a packet in a lavatory Die little baby screaming Body screaming fucking bloody mess Not an animal It's an abortion Body! I'm not animal Mummy! I'm not an abortion It kind of hits you in the face with the reality as experienced by the dispossessed and disenfranchised, but in a very immediate and visceral way. Its far more gut wrenching and confrontational than iggy pop, or the clash or any other punk band I know of. Most people are so offended someone is singing about abortion that they miss the fact that the song is an argument between the unborn child and the mother. For a spotty teenager that's pretty brainy lyrically and very surreal. I don't think it was ever matched until the Pixies really. I stand by the Pistols. True, Rotten is a twat now. He wasn't then though. From: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Subject: Re: The way the future was Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 21:03:43 +1100 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 4:30 am, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: Although I have very little good to say about Malcolm McLaren he did arguably launch a whole new musical experience with the Sex Pistols, a type of music which had until then only been underground (Rezillos? B52s ?) but bubbled to the surface when Rotten et al appeared on prime time TV swearing away. The world was never the same. I lived through it and was even more the same after it. With all due respect, you are saying that something musically significant happened here but I only ever heard racket and rubbish from Johnny Rotten. I mean, he called himself rotten for a reason. He was. He was musically as rotten as festering shit. What was musically significant about the Sex Pistols? I mean, concerning the actual elements of music. Things like pitch, rhythm, harmony, melody - all that core stuff. His music shows no skill whatsoever at those things. But then he didn't even write his own music because he was too off his dial most of the time. None of this precludes the distinct possibility that you, as I myself still do, find vastly entertaining, listening to the Sex Pistols very occasionally. I often do listen to music I really hate if only to realise why in ever more glory that I love the music I really do love... Feel free to hate this post creatively in some way. McClaren would have. Kim -- 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 http://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 http://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 http
RE: The way the future was
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:26:56 +0100 Subject: Re: The way the future was From: multiplecit...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Electric instruments just amplified what was already here. Beethoven istm was first in rock, metal, punk etc. all the way to dubstep department;crystallizing sound's relations with explosive power, defiance, melancholy or magnificence. Bach was more goth than punk, I'd guess, especially with the organ. Or you could see the origins of jagged, animalistic, primal fifth-based harmony in medieval music of ars antiqua and ars nova as the seed of power etc. All of heavy metal, rock, punk etc. is slave to what we call the power chord; albeit today's punk rockers are quite dogmatic regarding the harmony be expressed with distorted guitars. Then maybe the old Greeks rocked like nobody had ever rocked before, but we lack patches of history to know what they really sounded like. Or the stoners 60 thousand years ago with flutes, bones, rocks, and sticks might have already been 'rocking', as they certainly had the 'homeless nomadic take no prisoners perpetually alienated in hostile environment' thing of punk going. Yes, even the funky hairstyles and ritual clothing would be plausible ;-) PGC On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 7:45 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: I have 4 pistols tracks in my very large and eclectic MP3 music collection, along with many others generally called punk.John Lydon also gave me my all time favourite headline, Sex pistol attacks New Zealand butter. I even managed to turn it into a crossword clue - Enthusiastically attack butter (4) ...but anyway, yes, I like the Pistols some of the time, even if they were McLaren's boy band really. PS whoever put Hendrix as a proto punk should on the same basis add Cream and even the Stones. (At this rate everyone will be in on it...) On 11 March 2014 02:49, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: you are saying that something musically significant happened here Something significant happened to pop music for sure. In 1977 the charts were dominated by David Soul, Rod Stewart, Brotherhood of Man, Leo Sayer, Hot Chocolate, Boney M, Shawaddywaddy and Billy Ocean. Daddy Cool. Rockin' All Over the World and Yes Sir, I can Boogie. And then: Dragged on a table in factory Illegitimate place to be In a packet in a lavatory Die little baby screaming Body screaming fucking bloody mess Not an animal It's an abortion Body! I'm not animal Mummy! I'm not an abortion It kind of hits you in the face with the reality as experienced by the dispossessed and disenfranchised, but in a very immediate and visceral way. Its far more gut wrenching and confrontational than iggy pop, or the clash or any other punk band I know of. Most people are so offended someone is singing about abortion that they miss the fact that the song is an argument between the unborn child and the mother. For a spotty teenager that's pretty brainy lyrically and very surreal. I don't think it was ever matched until the Pixies really. I stand by the Pistols. True, Rotten is a twat now. He wasn't then though. From: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Subject: Re: The way the future was Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 21:03:43 +1100 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 4:30 am, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: Although I have very little good to say about Malcolm McLaren he did arguably launch a whole new musical experience with the Sex Pistols, a type of music which had until then only been underground (Rezillos? B52s ?) but bubbled to the surface when Rotten et al appeared on prime time TV swearing away. The world was never the same. I lived through it and was even more the same after it. With all due respect, you are saying that something musically significant happened here but I only ever heard racket and rubbish from Johnny Rotten. I mean, he called himself rotten for a reason. He was. He was musically as rotten as festering shit. What was musically significant about the Sex Pistols? I mean, concerning the actual elements of music. Things like pitch, rhythm, harmony, melody - all that core stuff. His music shows no skill whatsoever at those things. But then he didn't even write his own music because he was too off his dial most of the time. None of this precludes the distinct possibility that you, as I myself still do, find vastly entertaining, listening to the Sex Pistols very occasionally. I often do listen to music I really hate if only to realise why in ever more glory that I love the music I really do love... Feel free to hate this post creatively in some way. McClaren would have. Kim -- 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: The way the future was
Hi PGC yep. All art, like language, has an etymology. The Pistols weren't special because they did anything 'new', but because they did something that challenged the status quo of the time. When it comes to shocking people The Rite of Spring had the audience rioting at its premier, so suck on that Johnny Rotten! All of heavy metal, rock, punk etc. is slave to what we call the power chord; albeit today's punk rockers are quite dogmatic regarding the harmony be expressed with distorted guitars. Yes, thats true, but I don't think punk rock is really about musical innovation is it? These guys make a good argument that all pop of the past 40 years is essentially the same single song, you might like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I Or the stoners 60 thousand years ago with flutes, bones, rocks, and sticks might have already been 'rocking', as they certainly had the 'homeless nomadic take no prisoners perpetually alienated in hostile environment' thing of punk going. Yes, even the funky hairstyles and ritual clothing would be plausible ;-) PGC Im sure you're right. From: chris_peck...@hotmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: The way the future was Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 23:58:50 + Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:26:56 +0100 Subject: Re: The way the future was From: multiplecit...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Electric instruments just amplified what was already here. Beethoven istm was first in rock, metal, punk etc. all the way to dubstep department;crystallizing sound's relations with explosive power, defiance, melancholy or magnificence. Bach was more goth than punk, I'd guess, especially with the organ. Or you could see the origins of jagged, animalistic, primal fifth-based harmony in medieval music of ars antiqua and ars nova as the seed of power etc. All of heavy metal, rock, punk etc. is slave to what we call the power chord; albeit today's punk rockers are quite dogmatic regarding the harmony be expressed with distorted guitars. Then maybe the old Greeks rocked like nobody had ever rocked before, but we lack patches of history to know what they really sounded like. Or the stoners 60 thousand years ago with flutes, bones, rocks, and sticks might have already been 'rocking', as they certainly had the 'homeless nomadic take no prisoners perpetually alienated in hostile environment' thing of punk going. Yes, even the funky hairstyles and ritual clothing would be plausible ;-) PGC On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 7:45 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: I have 4 pistols tracks in my very large and eclectic MP3 music collection, along with many others generally called punk.John Lydon also gave me my all time favourite headline, Sex pistol attacks New Zealand butter. I even managed to turn it into a crossword clue - Enthusiastically attack butter (4) ...but anyway, yes, I like the Pistols some of the time, even if they were McLaren's boy band really. PS whoever put Hendrix as a proto punk should on the same basis add Cream and even the Stones. (At this rate everyone will be in on it...) On 11 March 2014 02:49, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: you are saying that something musically significant happened here Something significant happened to pop music for sure. In 1977 the charts were dominated by David Soul, Rod Stewart, Brotherhood of Man, Leo Sayer, Hot Chocolate, Boney M, Shawaddywaddy and Billy Ocean. Daddy Cool. Rockin' All Over the World and Yes Sir, I can Boogie. And then: Dragged on a table in factory Illegitimate place to be In a packet in a lavatory Die little baby screaming Body screaming fucking bloody mess Not an animal It's an abortion Body! I'm not animal Mummy! I'm not an abortion It kind of hits you in the face with the reality as experienced by the dispossessed and disenfranchised, but in a very immediate and visceral way. Its far more gut wrenching and confrontational than iggy pop, or the clash or any other punk band I know of. Most people are so offended someone is singing about abortion that they miss the fact that the song is an argument between the unborn child and the mother. For a spotty teenager that's pretty brainy lyrically and very surreal. I don't think it was ever matched until the Pixies really. I stand by the Pistols. True, Rotten is a twat now. He wasn't then though. From: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Subject: Re: The way the future was Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 21:03:43 +1100 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 4:30 am, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: Although I have very little good to say about Malcolm McLaren he did arguably launch a whole new musical experience with the Sex Pistols, a type of music which had until then only been underground (Rezillos? B52s ?) but bubbled to the surface when Rotten et al appeared on prime time TV swearing away. The world was never the same
RE: The way the future was
and prefer my songs interesting and quirky and catchy and fun (or in the case of the Smiths, the opposite of fun) (OK, except for Poker face :-) Yeah I used to furrow my brow a lot and listen to thought provoking gloom but these days fun is where its at. Lady G gets a lot of air time at home and Im enjoying Kitty, Daisy and Lewis at the moment with their yummy analogue production and retro sensibility. I give them a plug whenever I can. Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 07:48:35 -0700 From: ghib...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The way the future was On Tuesday, March 11, 2014 1:21:52 PM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, March 10, 2014 1:49:01 PM UTC, chris peck wrote: you are saying that something musically significant happened here Something significant happened to pop music for sure. In 1977 the charts were dominated by David Soul, Rod Stewart, Brotherhood of Man, Leo Sayer, Hot Chocolate, Boney M, Shawaddywaddy and Billy Ocean. Daddy Cool. Rockin' All Over the World and Yes Sir, I can Boogie. And then: Dragged on a table in factory Illegitimate place to be In a packet in a lavatory Die little baby screaming Body screaming fucking bloody mess Not an animal It's an abortion Body! I'm not animal Mummy! I'm not an abortion It kind of hits you in the face with the reality as experienced by the dispossessed and disenfranchised, but in a very immediate and visceral way. Its far more gut wrenching and confrontational than iggy pop, or the clash or any other punk band I know of. Most people are so offended someone is singing about abortion that they miss the fact that the song is an argument between the unborn child and the mother. For a spotty teenager that's pretty brainy lyrically and very surreal. I don't think it was ever matched until the Pixies really. I stand by the Pistols. True, Rotten is a twat now. He wasn't then though. I think they were shit, but then it was all just a little before my time. I ran away from care homes about 1980 to fine my estranged mum shacked up with the ex Crass guitarist Steve Herman in some shitty squat called trentishoe mansions. From there I moved out to live with the punks and skins of the west end 1980 generation. Better than a care home hee hee. It were great funny actually. But...all the biggest idiots always had sex pistols tattoos and sid vicious jackets. The music they made was rubbish. An d tends to be remembered as punk. Which even I buy into, hence surprise at that clash sound up the top of the thread. All the others liz mentioned were much better, though I couldn't have named them myself. Much more a case of, I lived it but I couldn't paint it. From: kimj...@ozemail.com.au Subject: Re: The way the future was Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 21:03:43 +1100 To: everyth...@googlegroups.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 4:30 am, ghi...@gmail.com wrote: Although I have very little good to say about Malcolm McLaren he did arguably launch a whole new musical experience with the Sex Pistols, a type of music which had until then only been underground (Rezillos? B52s ?) but bubbled to the surface when Rotten et al appeared on prime time TV swearing away. The world was never the same. I lived through it and was even more the same after it. With all due respect, you are saying that something musically significant happened here but I only ever heard racket and rubbish from Johnny Rotten. I mean, he called himself rotten for a reason. He was. He was musically as rotten as festering shit. What was musically significant about the Sex Pistols? I mean, concerning the actual elements of music. Things like pitch, rhythm, harmony, melody - all that core stuff. His music shows no skill whatsoever at those things. But then he didn't even write his own music because he was too off his dial most of the time. None of this precludes the distinct possibility that you, as I myself still do, find vastly entertaining, listening to the Sex Pistols very occasionally. I often do listen to music I really hate if only to realise why in ever more glory that I love the music I really do love... Feel free to hate this post creatively in some way. McClaren would have. Kim -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. I just thought of a great way to end this thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUwW108ITzw -- 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: The way the future was
It depends, sometimes yes... But at other times thought provoking gloom can be fun, while light, non-gloom fun can seem cheap and pandering. Just depends on situation. Right now, I don't know if what I'm listening to is light or gloomy and thought provoking. It has a minimal sort of machine line, which negates the deep gloom, with small peculiar things happening punctually. I don't know if its fun, it seems more curious. Thought provoking? Depends... It's Robert Henke's ''Ritual'' track on top of his homepage: That kind of stuff tickles me pink, and is fun from my perspective. These guys began their careers writing tracks in a similar vein to Henke's but have a warm analogue-like production which is like being in bed half asleep half awake on lovely sunny morning. http://warp.net/records/boards-of-canada Dayvan Cowboy is just yum. Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:26:24 +1300 Subject: Re: The way the future was From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 12 March 2014 14:10, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: But at other times thought provoking gloom can be fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-cD4oLk_D0 -- 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Bruno But that can only be a 3-1 description. She handles the 1p by a maximization of the interests of the copies, and that is equivalent with the FPI, without naming it. Funnily enough Bruno, if I was opportunistic I would just about accept that. I mean personally, I would argue that the vocabulary used is identical between you and Greaves and she explicitly denies your probability distribution from the first person perspective. I doubt this, as in the iterated self-duplication, her method get equivalent as justifying the probability talk, even the usual boolean one. There is a difference between your account and the accounts of others mentioned. Theirs are attempts to over come charges of incoherence by positing some mechanism for deriving bare quantities that can act in the place of probability; yours is not. You write as if there genuinely are actual classical probabilities from the first person perspective. You don't appear to recognize that there is a problem in doing that. Even worse, you present the alleged existence of classical probability from the first person as some kind of surprising discovery. You try and turn a vice into a virtue. Any theory in which all outcomes definitely occur 'objectively' but only one gets experienced within any observation, though all outcomes are experienced in one observation or another, must have an account in which probabilities are derived in a non standard non classical way. Why? Because classically probability is based on the assumption of a disjunction between objective outcomes not a conjunction between objective outcomes. Alternatively, one can live with classical probability of 1 that all outcomes will be observed, and discuss how decisions would be made 'as if' the usual probabilities obtained. Either approach is just the first step in making a coherent account of probability in an Everetian picture or a TofE. But you don't do either. Ignoring a problem is not the same as solving it, surely? It seems to leave your account incomplete or perhaps even just incoherent. It looks to me as though Deutsch, Wallace, Saunders and Greaves are all on the train rushing towards the destination and you've been left on the platform going: 'Huh? Its just vocab isn't it?'. But its obvious that if you say Alice predicts spin up with a probability of 0.5 and others say she would predict spin up with probability 1, as Greaves does, even if she gets her 0.5 elsewhere, then there are most definitely structural differences between your accounts. Its not just vocab. Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:31:29 -0700 From: gabebod...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 On Tuesday, March 11, 2014 10:38:23 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:OK. Me too. But modern physics has a strong mathematical flavor, and consciousness seems more to be an immaterial belief or knowledge than something made of particles, so, if interested in the mind body problem, the platonic perspective has some merit, especially taking into account the failure of Aristotelian dualism. That's an interesting topic, to be sure. Does comp actually help at all to solve the hard problem? When I think about it qualia, I have five main questions that I'd want a philosophy of mind to propose answers for. 1. What are qualia made of? 2. Why do patterns of ions and neurotransmitters crossing bilipid membranes in certain regions of the brain correlate perfectly to qualia? 3. How is a quale related to what it is about, under normal circumstances? What about when a quale is caused by artificially stimulated neurons, dreams, hallucinations, sensory illusions, mistakes in thought or memory, etc? 4. How can qualia affect the brain's processes, such that we can act on their information and talk and write about them? 5. How could we know that belief in qualia is justified? How could our instinctive belief in qualia be developed by correct and reliable brain processes? Chalmers' ideas, for example, involve answers to 1-3 that sound reasonable, but they stumble badly on 4-5. Comp and other mathematical Platonist ideas seem to me to give interesting answers to 2-4 but flub 1 and 5. -Gabe -- 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 http://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
RE: Max and FPI
The only person in any doubt was you wasn't it Liz? I found Tegmark's presentation very disappointing. He was alarmingly apologetic about MWI pleading that its flaws were mitigated by the fact other interpretations had similar flaws; as if the fact someone else is ill would make you less ill yourself. I think in the world of QM interpretations, with bugger all evidence to decide between them, the game is to even out the playing field in terms of flaws and then chase parsimony. Ofcourse, whether an infinite set of worlds is more or less parsimonious than just one + a few hidden variables, or one + a spooky wave function collapse, depends very much on what definition of parsimonious you find most fitting. We got the classic intuition buster argument. You know, screw intuition because it evolved in the sub Saharan savannah to help us lob spears. God forbid that it evolved in sub Saharan society to help spot hogwash. Apart from the fact that he confuses Tau for intuition, even before QM and Relativity came along, intuition has never been the arbiter of right and wrong. There have always been counter intuitive facts, there is nothing new about the current situation. Theres no more reason to distrust intuition now that there has been before. Its only ever been a guide and as such should be trusted as much now as it ever was. And that was never entirely. Worst of all though was that I wanted to hear about his level 4 multiverse but he didn't address it except to comment that it was a little nutty. But really, in the world of QM interpretation barking mad is where things start. Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 21:05:53 +1300 Subject: Re: Max and FPI From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com He's talking about the fact that you get about 50% 0s and 50% 1s ... as we were discussing recently. I trust this clears up any lingering doubts about what he meant by this. On 23 March 2014 18:50, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 11:27:13PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: Here's Max! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC0zHIf2Gkw Brent Thanks for that. One thing that struck me was how ordinary the FPI argument (UDA step 3) seems when Max talks about it. But also how it generalises to unequal probabilities - which was the thrust of that paper we discussed here a couple of years ago - in generating the Born rule from counting arguments. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 http://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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark
I think you're missing Scott's point. The universe is obviously isomorphic to a mathematical structure, in fact infinitely many different mathematical structures, all of which are in Borges Library of Babel. Almost all of them are just lists of what happens. Scott's point is that this is not very interesting, important, or impressive. It's only some small elegant compression of those lists that's interesting - if it exists. Scott seems to think that it does. I think it does *only* because we're willing to call a lot of stuff geography as Bruno puts it, aka boundary conditions, symmetry breaking, randomness... Hmm, I just read Scott as saying that MUH is scientifically empty in the sense that it makes no significant predictions, the emphasis being on the word significant. The predictions it does make are a little wishy washy. Like, MUH predicts that science will continue to uncover mathematically describable regularities in nature. what would a non-mathematically describable law look like? And how is a mathematically describable regularity in this universe evidence of the existence of another mathematical universe? He also takes Tegmark to task on his use of anthropic reasoning because it allows Tegmark to have his cake and to eat it. The extent to which regularities are elegantly described by maths will be taken as evidence for an inherently mathematical ontology. The extent to which they are not will allow him to invoke the anthropic principle and say well it would be absurdly lucky that the one universe that existed just happened to have these wierd constants that supported life. I think in Popperian terminology Tegmark's predictions just are not risky enough. He's guaranteed to hit one or the other every time. I'll be interested in how Tegmark addresses Scott's last point concerning the physicality of universes beyond the cosmic horizon. I can see both points of view. I can appreciate Tegmark's view that a galaxy 1 light year beyond the cosmic horizon is just like Andromeda but just a bit further away. On the other hand I also see Scott's point that if it is just far enough away to prevent any causal interaction then it doesn't satisfy a reasonable definition of physical. To be physical is to be causally relevant. There doesn't seem to be much semantic difference between a non physical universe and one which is so far away that it couldn't ever effect us. Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 16:57:05 +1300 Subject: Re: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 25 March 2014 16:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 3/24/2014 8:24 PM, LizR wrote: But Tegmark goes further. He doesn't say that the universe is isomorphic to a mathematical structure; he says that it is that structure, that its physical and mathematical existence are the same thing. I can see the appeal. If the universe ever does prove to be isomorphic to a mathematical structure (and I'm sure that's a long, long, long way from being proved at present) - by which I mean, if the universe is exactly described by said structure, with nothing else needed to completely describe reality - at that point, at least, I would take Max's MUH seriously, if only because Ockham's razor would indicate there was no point in hypothesising the existence of two things that are exactly isomosphic. I think you're missing Scott's point. The universe is obviously isomorphic to a mathematical structure, in fact infinitely many different mathematical structures, all of which are in Borges Library of Babel. Almost all of them are just lists of what happens. Scott's point is that this is not very interesting, important, or impressive. It's only some small elegant compression of those lists that's interesting - if it exists. Scott seems to think that it does. I think it does *only* because we're willing to call a lot of stuff geography as Bruno puts it, aka boundary conditions, symmetry breaking, randomness... Yes, if that's his point I am missing it, because although that may be true it isn't addressing what the MUH claims (at least making the rather large assumption that I've understood it correctly). The MUH as I (perhaps mis-) understand it appears to assume there is some minimal mathematical representation of the universe (known as the laws of physics or TOE or whatver), and that this exists in a manner that allows us to differentiate it from geography - as it seems to, at least for the physical constants that don't appear to vary with time or space, etc. So one has at least got what may be called local laws of physics and local geography as a starting
RE: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark
An infinite universe (Tegmark type 1) implies that our consciousness flits about from one copy of us to another and that as a consequence we are immortal, so it does affect us even if there is no physical communication between its distant parts. I don't think it implies that at all. We don't know what consciousness really is but if it turns out to emerge from or supervene on some localized lump of stuff then there would be lots of independent consciousnesses that experienced similar things to me, rather than one consciousness per person-set that flits about faster than light over the set of infinite universes; somehow making time to get back to me per time iteration. But even if your implication stood, it would open up a huge can of philosophical worms. What exactly constitutes a 'me' 10^10^29 meters away from here? In the infinite space there are a fair few mes, all of whom have some differences, differences in history, differences in location, differences in body, differences in vocations, beliefs even wives etc. An infinite spectrum of me. A happy thought for women everywhere but at what point does it become ridiculous to say this or that copy is still me? This is the problem Lewis faces with modal realism and why he gets wishy washy about whether these copies are me or are not me but are just similar to me in so many regards. More importantly, when we are talking about cause and effect we are talking about something other than dodgy metaphysical consequences such as 'immortality'. We're want something that can be measured. From: stath...@gmail.com Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 10:12:09 +1100 Subject: Re: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 25 March 2014 16:58, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: I think you're missing Scott's point. The universe is obviously isomorphic to a mathematical structure, in fact infinitely many different mathematical structures, all of which are in Borges Library of Babel. Almost all of them are just lists of what happens. Scott's point is that this is not very interesting, important, or impressive. It's only some small elegant compression of those lists that's interesting - if it exists. Scott seems to think that it does. I think it does *only* because we're willing to call a lot of stuff geography as Bruno puts it, aka boundary conditions, symmetry breaking, randomness... Hmm, I just read Scott as saying that MUH is scientifically empty in the sense that it makes no significant predictions, the emphasis being on the word significant. The predictions it does make are a little wishy washy. Like, MUH predicts that science will continue to uncover mathematically describable regularities in nature. what would a non-mathematically describable law look like? And how is a mathematically describable regularity in this universe evidence of the existence of another mathematical universe? He also takes Tegmark to task on his use of anthropic reasoning because it allows Tegmark to have his cake and to eat it. The extent to which regularities are elegantly described by maths will be taken as evidence for an inherently mathematical ontology. The extent to which they are not will allow him to invoke the anthropic principle and say well it would be absurdly lucky that the one universe that existed just happened to have these wierd constants that supported life. I think in Popperian terminology Tegmark's predictions just are not risky enough. He's guaranteed to hit one or the other every time. I'll be interested in how Tegmark addresses Scott's last point concerning the physicality of universes beyond the cosmic horizon. I can see both points of view. I can appreciate Tegmark's view that a galaxy 1 light year beyond the cosmic horizon is just like Andromeda but just a bit further away. On the other hand I also see Scott's point that if it is just far enough away to prevent any causal interaction then it doesn't satisfy a reasonable definition of physical. To be physical is to be causally relevant. There doesn't seem to be much semantic difference between a non physical universe and one which is so far away that it couldn't ever effect us. An infinite universe (Tegmark type 1) implies that our consciousness flits about from one copy of us to another and that as a consequence we are immortal, so it does affect us even if there is no physical communication between its distant parts. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
RE: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark
It's a pretty significant dodgy metaphysical consequence if you actually live forever. Its many things. Interesting, strange, wonderful and so on but the one thing it isn't is significant. The continuation of an experiential history on some other earth, a history common to the one that just ended here on this earth, is not an effect on this earth. Its as insignificant to this earth as things can be. Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 19:56:21 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark On 3/25/2014 6:57 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 26 March 2014 12:55, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 26 March 2014 14:50, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 26 March 2014 12:45, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 3/25/2014 6:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 26 March 2014 12:15, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: An infinite universe (Tegmark type 1) implies that our consciousness flits about from one copy of us to another and that as a consequence we are immortal, so it does affect us even if there is no physical communication between its distant parts. That seems to imply that one's consciousness is unique and moves around like a soul.
RE: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark
But that's assuming you don't live forever, so you aren't answering the other poster's comment. Sure it does and I'm not assuming that. It makes no difference whether I live forever or not. Personally, lets say whilst my widow, mistresses and admirers are all deep in mourning here, my history continues somewhere else beyond the reach of light. What tangible effect can be measured by the scientists at my wake? What effect does this continuation have here? All you end up with are two identifiably distinct worlds that are unable to causally influence one another. From an operational stand point they simply do not exist relative to one another. Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 16:25:11 +1300 Subject: Re: Scott Aaronson vs. Max Tegmark From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 26 March 2014 16:22, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: It's a pretty significant dodgy metaphysical consequence if you actually live forever. Its many things. Interesting, strange, wonderful and so on but the one thing it isn't is significant. The continuation of an experiential history on some other earth, a history common to the one that just ended here on this earth, is not an effect on this earth. Its as insignificant to this earth as things can be. But that's assuming you don't live forever, so you aren't answering the other poster's comment. -- 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
The real story here is that a peer reviewed journal was intimidated into withdrawing a paper that had passed through the proper review channels. That the internet is full of conspiracy theory isn't news. And to the extent that climate science denial is correlated with beliefs in conspiracy theories, so is climate science acceptance. You don't have to read blog rows for long to see that climate science acceptors are the lackeys of communist Illuminati hell bent on denying the world freedom and that climate science deniers are in bed with the oil barons attempting in a capitalist frenzy to do pretty much the same thing. What gets lost on both sides is the actual science. A fact that I think is illustrated perfectly when climate science acceptors demand capitulation on the basis that 97% of climate scientists agree there is human caused problem. That 97% of scientists agree is an empirical fact, presumably, but it is also an irrelevant one. Not a single fact about the climate is true on the basis of a 97% agreement between scientists. Its an argument from authority writ large. its the kind of fact which if persuasive would have kept us believing the earth was flat. Yet every time I see blog rows on climate change it gets trotted out as if it is informative. I think what this paper really shows is just that part and parcel of debate is to weave a narrative about your opponent: 'Obviously', if you are not convinced by my water tight arguments then there must be something wrong with you. Unfortunately the paper shows it by doing it. Thats not to say that it shouldn't have been published, it should have. But the shame is that by not publishing it, it has somehow earnt respect and currency. Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 12:15:26 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing On 4/6/2014 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 6:47 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/5/2014 4:18 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 1:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/5/2014 3:54 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Sure, I also find it quite likely that powerful fossil fuel companies are lobbying or using even dirtier tricks to discredit AGW theory. On the other hand, this says nothing about the truth status of AGW theory. Doesn't it? If it weren't true, then dirty tricks wouldn't be needed to discredit it, would they? It could be discredited like the flat earth, creationism, and cigarettes-are-good-for-you theories. If that was true, the world would be free from religious superstition So do you classify religion as a conspiracy? Do you think clergy are really all atheists and are just conspiring to fool others? I subscribe Bruno's and Kim's replies. But this is besides the point here. You claimed that, if AGW was false, then oil companies would only need to falsify the models to affect political change. If that were true, then it wouldn't be the case that the majority of the world population is religious, because most religious claims are trivially and publicly falsified by the many fields of modern science, from cosmology to archeology. Religions make vague claims which are 'interpreted' and so cannot be falsified - notice that even Bruno believes in a God and refers to
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
Brent If 100% of scientists were in agreement about climate change, that fact alone, tells me nothing about the truth of the claims they actually make. You probably didn't test the germ theory of disease or conservation of energy either. Yes, and my great great great great great grand parents didn't test the theory that disease was caused by sin. They knew it was sin because so many experts told them it was. The superiority of my view over theirs can not be established by an appeal to a consensus because in this regard me and my ancestors are equivalent. They have their consensus and I have mine. If I am to convince them I will have an easier time drawing their attention to the actual science. Whenever we're on the verge of a scientific revolution we're usually in a situation where 99.999% of scientists disagree with what happens to be more accurate. Those 99% have as much responsibility to show why the 1% are wrong as vica versa. Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 16:51:34 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing On 4/6/2014 4:08 PM, chris peck wrote: The real story here is that a peer reviewed journal was intimidated into withdrawing a paper that had passed through the proper review channels. That the internet is full of conspiracy theory isn't news. And to the extent that climate science denial is correlated with beliefs in conspiracy theories, so is climate science acceptance. You don't have to read blog rows for long to see that climate science acceptors are the lackeys of communist Illuminati hell bent on denying the world freedom and that climate science deniers are in bed with the oil barons attempting in a capitalist frenzy to do pretty much the same thing. What gets lost on both sides is the actual science. A fact that I think is illustrated perfectly when climate science acceptors demand capitulation on the basis that 97% of climate scientists agree there is human caused problem. That 97% of scientists agree is an empirical fact, presumably, but it is also an irrelevant one. Not a single fact about the climate is true on the basis of a 97% agreement between scientists. Its an argument from authority writ large. its the kind of fact which if persuasive would have kept us believing the earth was flat. Yet every time I see blog rows on climate change it gets trotted out as if it is informative. But it is informative. It means that if you disagree, you need to show why the published papers of these people who have spent a lot of time and energy studying and measuring are wrong. After all you probably never did an experiment to prove the Earth is spherical. You accepted it because you were told it (If you dont' already know it, you might find it instructive to read the story of Alfred Wallace and John Hampden's bet http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2010/08/the-flat-earth-fiasco.html ). You probably didn't test the germ theory of disease or conservation of energy either. 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
So does the agreement of physicists at CERN tell you nothing about whether the Higgs boson exists? It tells me absolutely nothing. Im interested in why they agree not that they agree. How do you know that - did you take someone's word for it? Was it a scientist? Assuming you are asking how do I know the germ theory is a superior theory. My point is that whether it is superior or not can not be decided by appeals to consensus. Maybe its sin. Maybe its not. That's not really true. It often is true. Of course scientific revolutions start with one or two scientists not a consensus then. You appear to agree then, are you just being argumentative? Or are you really persuaded by consensus? - but it's not that case that all the others disagree with the better theory; they just haven't heard it yet. Look how quickly special relativity, matrix mechanics, Schodinger's equation, and Dirac's theory of the electron were accepted. Resistance to a new and better theory arises when there is a lot of investment in old theories. The speed with which people came to accept relativity is irrelevant. There was a consensus against relativity initially because it was not derived from experiment. Relativity was eventually convincing because it was confirmed by experiment, not because lots of physicists accepted it. Perhaps you accept relativity because you've been told about a consensus. I accept it because I've read about the experimental confirmations. Indeed, and they have. Every objection: heat island, cosmic rays, increased insolation, measurement error, miscalibration of proxies,...has been studied and answered. And did they answer those objections by appealing to a consensus? Did they go 'Its not cosmic rays because 76% of scientists believe otherwise'? You apparently didn't read about Alfred Russell's experience with John Hampden. No I didn't. Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 18:09:41 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing On 4/6/2014 5:35 PM, chris peck wrote: Brent If 100% of scientists were in agreement about climate change, that fact alone, tells me nothing about the truth of the claims they actually make. So does the agreement of physicists at CERN tell you nothing about whether the Higgs boson exists? You probably didn't test the germ theory of disease or conservation of energy either. Yes, and my great great great great great grand parents didn't test the theory that disease was caused by sin. They knew it was sin because so many experts told them it was. The superiority of my view over theirs can not be established by an appeal to a consensus because in this regard me and my ancestors are equivalent. They have their consensus and I have mine. If I am to convince them I will have an easier time drawing their attention to the actual science. How do you know that - did you take someone's word for it? Was it a scientist? Whenever we're on the verge of a scientific revolution we're usually in a situation where 99.999% of scientists disagree with what happens to be more accurate. That's not really true. Of course scientific revolutions start with one or two scientists - but it's not that case that all the others disagree with the better theory; they just haven't heard it yet. Look how quickly special relativity, matrix mechanics, Schodinger's equation, and Dirac's theory of the electron were accepted. Resistance to a new and better theory arises when there is a lot of investment in old theories. But to get back to AGW, there was no old theory. The increase of temperatures due to CO2 from fossil fuel was predicted over a hundred years ago and everybody who knew anything about it agreed - UNTIL it appeared to be something we needed to act on. THEN there were all kinds of wacky alternate 'explanations' proposed. Those 99% have as much responsibility to show why the 1% are wrong as vica versa. Indeed, and they have. Every objection: heat island, cosmic rays, increased insolation, measurement error, miscalibration of proxies,...has been studied and answered. You apparently didn't read about Alfred Russell's experience with John Hampden. 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
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
They agree because the equipment they used produced a signal they interpreted using their best available theories as indicating the existence of the Higgs. Right I see. So the physicists at cern don't count the number of people who are in agreement, they actually do look at equipment now and again. Thats a relief because Brent had me worried that they didn't think they had to do much of that. Hence if you're interested in why they agree, you have to take into account how the experiment works, how the confidence levels were assessed, and so on. It's no good just saying I'm only interested in why they agree as though you're privy to some extraordinary psychological insight, because that's just wilfully ignoring the real facts of the matter. eh? Otherwise you're just like the postmodernists who used to claim that all views are equivalent but still preferred to fly to conferences by jet rather than broomstick for reasons they could never quite explain (well, not without showing themselves up to be pompous idiots, which I guess - dipping my toes into the world of extraordinary psychological insight myself for a moment - they wanted to avoid). Im sure you know what you're talking about but I haven't got a clue. Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 14:47:42 +1200 Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 7 April 2014 14:32, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: So does the agreement of physicists at CERN tell you nothing about whether the Higgs boson exists? It tells me absolutely nothing. Im interested in why they agree not that they agree. They agree because the equipment they used produced a signal they interpreted using their best available theories as indicating the existence of the Higgs. Hence if you're interested in why they agree, you have to take into account how the experiment works, how the confidence levels were assessed, and so on. It's no good just saying I'm only interested in why they agree as though you're privy to some extraordinary psychological insight, because that's just wilfully ignoring the real facts of the matter. Otherwise you're just like the postmodernists who used to claim that all views are equivalent but still preferred to fly to conferences by jet rather than broomstick for reasons they could never quite explain (well, not without showing themselves up to be pompous idiots, which I guess - dipping my toes into the world of extraordinary psychological insight myself for a moment - they wanted to avoid). -- 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
Brent If most scientists in a field agree on something, I count that as evidence in favor of their position. I don't see how it can be, the fact that scientists agree about relativity isn't a fact that has any information content about relativity. Its at best a dubious kind of 'evidence by proxy'. f course that's a chicken-and-egg problem. Physicists accepted it because it agreed with experiment. Exactly, because it agreed with experiment. Theres nothing chicken and egg about it. Einstein dreamt up a theory. People treated it with general suspicion. It made predictions, which were confirmed by experiments. People began to accept the theory. At no point in this story did anyone accept things on consensus. And if they did, they were wrong to. No, of course not. But I didn't repeat their calculations and measurements and neither did the deniers. Im not suggesting people should personally repeat experiments. There is a difference in accepting relativity provisionally because you've read about Eddington's observations of light bending around the sun and accepting relativity because you've read that a bunch of physicists accept relativity. In one you have a reason to accept that relates to the phenomenon itself, in the other you just have this information-less consensus. Likewise, when climate science accepters make gambits on blogs like '97% of scientists agree!!!' its an empty statement and should be discarded as such. To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing From: spudboy...@aol.com Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 09:27:00 -0400 Let's agree its a real problem, but it's also an opportunity for more control. Or should we be good with handing control of the internet, as well, to the UN? What is the remediation for this problem and how long will it take to implement? -Original Message- From: chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sun, Apr 6, 2014 7:08 pm Subject: RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing The real story here is that a peer reviewed journal was intimidated into withdrawing a paper that had passed through the proper review channels. That the internet is full of conspiracy theory isn't news. And to the extent that climate science denial is correlated with beliefs in conspiracy theories, so is climate science acceptance. You don't have to read blog rows for long to see that climate science acceptors are the lackeys of communist Illuminati hell bent on denying the world freedom and that climate science deniers are in bed with the oil barons attempting in a capitalist frenzy to do pretty much the same thing. What gets lost on both sides is the actual science. A fact that I think is illustrated perfectly when climate science acceptors demand capitulation on the basis that 97% of climate scientists agree there is human caused problem. That 97% of scientists agree is an empirical fact, presumably, but it is also an irrelevant one. Not a single fact about the climate is true on the basis of a 97% agreement between scientists. Its an argument from authority writ large. its the kind of fact which if persuasive would have kept us believing the earth was flat. Yet every time I see blog rows on climate change it gets trotted out as if it is informative. I think what this paper really shows is just that part and parcel of debate is to weave a narrative about your opponent: 'Obviously', if you are not convinced by my water tight arguments then there must be something wrong with you. Unfortunately the paper shows it by doing it. Thats not to say that it shouldn't have been published, it should have. But the shame is that by not publishing it, it has somehow earnt respect and currency. Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 12:15:26 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing On 4/6/2014 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 6:47 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/5/2014 4:18 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 1:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/5/2014 3:54 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Sure, I also find it quite likely
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
Hence, people who claim that scientists agree because of some reason other than looking at the instruments and using their best theories to interpret the readings - e.g. people who claim that they agree for some psychological reason, e.g. because they all adhere to some paradigm - are talking bollocks. I still don't understand what you're getting at Liz. What 'psychological paradigm' is who claiming scientists agree because of? I mean I don't particularly like the suggestion that scientists are in some sense superhuman and impervious to the flaws the rest of us mortals succumb to, but we'ld just fly off on another tangent if we discussed that. my point is just that 'agree with this because lots of scientists say so' isn't a terribly convincing argument, yet its one I see lots of climate acceptors promote. Relativity isn't a good theory because Einstein said it was. Nor is it a good theory because a bunch of Einsteins say it is. How many science lessons start like: 'Right children, please shut your text books. Now lots of people agree with relativity so you should too. Now on evolution, lots of scientists think we evolved via natural selection, so you should too. Good. that about wraps it up for your science class this week. Lets move on to home economics...' Im actually stunned this is under debate. Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 12:14:29 +1200 Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sorry when I said you I didn't mean you specifically, I meant generically - one would have been better. I shall try to paraphrase myself in an attempt to better express what I was trying to say. Hence, people who claim that scientists agree because of some reason other than looking at the instruments and using their best theories to interpret the readings - e.g. people who claim that they agree for some psychological reason, e.g. because they all adhere to some paradigm - are talking bollocks. On 7 April 2014 14:56, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: They agree because the equipment they used produced a signal they interpreted using their best available theories as indicating the existence of the Higgs. Right I see. So the physicists at cern don't count the number of people who are in agreement, they actually do look at equipment now and again. Thats a relief because Brent had me worried that they didn't think they had to do much of that. Hence if you're interested in why they agree, you have to take into account how the experiment works, how the confidence levels were assessed, and so on. It's no good just saying I'm only interested in why they agree as though you're privy to some extraordinary psychological insight, because that's just wilfully ignoring the real facts of the matter. eh? Otherwise you're just like the postmodernists who used to claim that all views are equivalent but still preferred to fly to conferences by jet rather than broomstick for reasons they could never quite explain (well, not without showing themselves up to be pompous idiots, which I guess - dipping my toes into the world of extraordinary psychological insight myself for a moment - they wanted to avoid). Im sure you know what you're talking about but I haven't got a clue. Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 14:47:42 +1200 Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 7 April 2014 14:32, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: So does the agreement of physicists at CERN tell you nothing about whether the Higgs boson exists? It tells me absolutely nothing. Im interested in why they agree not that they agree. They agree because the equipment they used produced a signal they interpreted using their best available theories as indicating the existence of the Higgs. Hence if you're interested in why they agree, you have to take into account how the experiment works, how the confidence levels were assessed, and so on. It's no good just saying I'm only interested in why they agree as though you're privy to some extraordinary psychological insight, because that's just wilfully ignoring the real facts of the matter. Otherwise you're just like the postmodernists who used to claim that all views are equivalent but still preferred to fly to conferences by jet rather than broomstick for reasons they could never quite explain (well, not without showing themselves up to be pompous idiots, which I guess - dipping my toes into the world of extraordinary psychological insight myself for a moment - they wanted to avoid). -- 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
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
Oh, when it suits your prejudice it's OK to just count votes. You suddenly no longer need to read the papers and decide for yourself. Eh? Why the sour face? I thought you'ld be cracking open the champagne. There's no consensus. I give you perhaps the best news in history, ever, and you're just sour about it! You're not suggesting we ought to read about the science and think for ourselves are you?! What a drag! Seriously though, how come this 97% figure is presented by climate change acceptors as a consensus about the catastrophic effect global warming will have when it isn't one? Do they even know that the figure represents just those scientist who agree climate change is happening? Do they know it doesn't reflect the amount of scientists who think the change is caused by humans? They certainly don't know that less than 50% of scientists think the effect of warming would be catastrophic otherwise that figure would enter into their discourse, or would it? I suspect the temptation to keep a bit silent about what a shocking figure like 97% really represents is overwhelming. A little white lie and so on, an economy with the truth etc. In actual fact I think all these figures are bullshit. Listening to what the scientists actually have to say is exactly what people should do, even congressmen, rather than close ones ears to everything except easily digestible and neatly misrepresentable figures. The title of this thread is really ironic. It could as well have been, if the the science is in fact ambiguous, deflect attention to startling statistics. Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 10:38:07 +0200 Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing From: te...@telmomenezes.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 6:45 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/5/2014 4:13 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 1:01 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/5/2014 12:40 PM, LizR wrote: On 5 April 2014 23:30, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 11:47 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: That doesn't narrow it down too much. Je m'accuse. I was one of them. My point was that conspiracy theories, in the sense of power elites secretly cooperating to further their own interests against the interests of the majority are not, unfortunately, unusual events in History. We know of countless examples of this happening in the past. I think it requires some magical thinking to assume that this type of behaviour is absent from our own times. I further pointed out that broadly discrediting any hypothesis that some elites might be conspiring against the common good, in broad strokes, seems to benefit precisely the ones in power. Furthermore, thanks to Snowden, we now have strong evidence of a large-scale conspiracy by western governments that I would not believe one year ago. In this case I'm referring to the secret implementation of global and total surveillance, with our tax money, by the people we elected, to spy on us, infringing on constitutions. I
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
Not at all. Have you read the peer reviewed papers that the IPCC cites? I've read a lot of them. Why have you felt the need to read them? You were just arguing that congressmen, people who unlike yourself are in a position to take or prevent action, did not need to. Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 10:13:44 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing On 4/8/2014 4:44 AM, chris peck wrote: Oh, when it suits your prejudice it's OK to just count votes. You suddenly no longer need to read the papers and decide for yourself. Eh? Why the sour face? I thought you'ld be cracking open the champagne. There's no consensus. I give you perhaps the best news in history, ever, and you're just sour about it! You're not suggesting we ought to read about the science and think for ourselves are you?! What a drag! Not at all. Have you read the peer reviewed papers that the IPCC cites? I've read a lot of them. Seriously though, how come this 97% figure is presented by climate change acceptors as a consensus about the catastrophic effect global warming will have when it isn't one? Show me a quote where is it presented that way. The actual statement is 97% of climate scientists believe that the Earth is getting hotter and it's due to burning fossil fuel. Do they even know that the figure represents just those scientist who agree climate change is happening? Do they know it doesn't reflect the amount of scientists who think the change is caused by humans? They certainly don't know that less than 50% of scientists think the effect of warming would be catastrophic otherwise that figure would enter into their discourse, or would it? I suspect the temptation to keep a bit silent about what a shocking figure like 97% really represents is overwhelming. A little white lie and so on, an economy with the truth etc. No one has said it would be catastrophic, as in threaten extinction of humans. They have said it will be very economically and socially disruptive and produce major changes in agriculture and in natural food and water sources. In actual fact I think all these figures are bullshit. Listening to what the scientists actually have to say is exactly what people should do, even congressmen, rather than close ones ears to everything except easily digestible and neatly misrepresentable figures. So why don't you listen? 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
I have known Brent for a long time, and think this rather unlikely. He has a string grasp of Physics and other general scientific topics, as well as a lifetime of professional research. Then he is hoisting himself up with his own petard. Either he needs to be a climate scientist or he doesn't. but understanding what is written has a much lower bar. It does. You are now in agreement with me rather than Brent. Absolutely. But people without any form of research training would find it very difficult indeed. All attempts to write about science for general consumption are worthless are they, Russell? For example, you spent 5 years translating Bruno's book to what end? No end? I mean if what you say is true you should make absolutely clear to everyone you can that they should not buy the book unless they possess the requisite qualifications which few people are going to have. I don't think you really believe that. I think you believe that core issues about a science can be communicated to lay people sufficiently well for them to make rational decisions about them. Besides which, its just the logic of the situation that even if it where impossible to understand anything about climate science without a PHd in it, statements about consensus would still be empty. It would still be a logical fallacy to proclaim something to be true because of who said it, rather than what was said. Sadly, there are very few politicians with that sort of training though. Most politicians have training in Law. A far more subtle and far harder discipline than science. You should give them more credit. Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 09:24:08 +1000 From: li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing On Tue, Apr 08, 2014 at 11:06:09PM +, chris peck wrote: To see if various denier criticisms were valid. So you accept the claims of climate change advocates as true by default and only read those papers which have criticisms leveled at them by deniers? That isn't very even handed. I argued that most congressmen wouldn't be able to read them (since very few are scientists of any kind, much less climate scientists). If it is important to be a climate scientist to read a climate science paper then, again, why do you bother reading them? You are not a climate scientist. You do not, on your own account, possess the skills to understand them. I have known Brent for a long time, and think this rather unlikely. He has a string grasp of Physics and other general scientific topics, as well as a lifetime of professional research. What he probably doesn't have the skills for is to write a climate science paper and have it accepted in a peer reviewed journal, but understanding what is written has a much lower bar. In truth though, it doesn't follow from the fact that someone isn't a scientist that they can't read or understand a scientific paper. Thats just tawdry elitism. Since it is possible to teach children physics, biology, chemistry etc. it is also possible to explain the important aspects of climate science to congressmen. And thats what should happen rather than chucking around empty statements about consensuses or the lack of thereof. Absolutely. But people without any form of research training would find it very difficult indeed. Most people with a PhD in physics, or even a lesser degree such as a MSc by research or a BSc (hons) could probably manage, as the science itself is classical. Sadly, there are very few politicians with that sort of training though. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- 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 http://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 http
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
Amoeba's Secret is not a peer reviewed research article, but rather already written for mass consumption (-ish, as my son would say). My comments applied to research articles only, as that was the context. Russell, I determine the context because this current row was triggered when Brent quibbled with a comment I made. The context is not peer reviewed articles. The context is any material available to the general public. And the question is to what extent the general public should be fed actual scientific facts about climate change and to what extent they should rely on figures about consensus amongst scientists. It would still be a logical fallacy to proclaim something to be true because of who said it, rather than what was said. I think Liz has clarified what is actually being claimed here. Liz is under the misconception that I argue that climate change advocates only use this consensus figure. My argument is not that, it is that when they use this consensus figure they commit a logical fallacy. It relates to my argument that climate change advocates are as prone to logical fallacy and conspiracy theory as climate change deniers. This relates to the study that was pulled from the journal which in my view is as politically orientated a study as there can be. It only investigates those conspiracies dreamt up by climate change deniers and has nothing to say about how conspiracy theories are used to deflect attention from science generally. Ofcourse, when climate change advocates portray a climate change denier who is challenging the actual science as being 'in the bed of oil barons', they are doing precisely the same thing. When they dismiss what the climate change denier argues because '97% of scientists agree' they commit a fallacy. This latest row was trigger by nothing more controversial than that. Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 10:18:34 +1000 From: li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing On Tue, Apr 08, 2014 at 11:50:07PM +, chris peck wrote: Absolutely. But people without any form of research training would find it very difficult indeed. All attempts to write about science for general consumption are worthless are they, Russell? For example, you spent 5 years translating Bruno's book to what end? No end? I mean if what you say is true you should make absolutely clear to everyone you can that they should not buy the book unless they possess the requisite qualifications which few people are going to have. Amoeba's Secret is not a peer reviewed research article, but rather already written for mass consumption (-ish, as my son would say). My comments applied to research articles only, as that was the context. Of course, I never implied that people without research training cannot apply themselves to understanding research articles - I believe our own Stephen P. King would be a suitable counterexample, IIUC, but just that it is very hard for someone to do so, and requires a lot of determination, so they are few and far between. I don't think you really believe that. I think you believe that core issues about a science can be communicated to lay people sufficiently well for them to make rational decisions about them. Of course. But then naturally those decision makers will need to take those expert opinions on trust, as they don't have the ability and/or inclination to read the primary literature. Besides which, its just the logic of the situation that even if it where impossible to understand anything about climate science without a PHd in it, statements about consensus would still be empty. It would still be a logical fallacy to proclaim something to be true because of who said it, rather than what was said. I think Liz has clarified what is actually being claimed here. Sadly, there are very few politicians with that sort of training though. Most politicians have training in Law. A far more subtle and far harder discipline than science. You should give them more credit. I'm not sure about most, but certainly more than those with science training. I do not underestimate the intellectual capacity required to study law. I'm married to one. As for being more subtle and harder, I think that depends on the student. For me, studying law would be much more difficult than studying science, as there is far too much rote learning for me. I would say the converse is true in my wife's case. My son is somewhere in between, but I suspect that ultimately he might end up studying law though, as he;d have an easier job of it. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New
RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
If in some general discussion of climate change someone says (as a convenient shorthand) that 97% of climate scientists agree that AGW is a fact, what is the logical fallacy they are committing? I'd like to know so I can avoid it in future myself. if you are just pointing out that a consensus exists and nothing more then it isn't a fallacy. This consensus exists. If on the other hand you are pointing out that the consensus exists for some other end, ie as a means of convincing people of the truth of any statement other than '97% of scientist think climate change is occurring', then it is a fallacy. Things are not true because people believe them right? Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 12:59:53 +1200 Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 9 April 2014 12:51, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: It would still be a logical fallacy to proclaim something to be true because of who said it, rather than what was said. I think Liz has clarified what is actually being claimed here. Liz is under the misconception that I argue that climate change advocates only use this consensus figure. My argument is not that, it is that when they use this consensus figure they commit a logical fallacy. It relates to my argument that climate change advocates are as prone to logical fallacy and conspiracy theory as climate change deniers. This relates to the study that was pulled from the journal which in my view is as politically orientated a study as there can be. It only investigates those conspiracies dreamt up by climate change deniers and has nothing to say about how conspiracy theories are used to deflect attention from science generally. Ofcourse, when climate change advocates portray a climate change denier who is challenging the actual science as being 'in the bed of oil barons', they are doing precisely the same thing. When they dismiss what the climate change denier argues because '97% of scientists agree' they commit a fallacy. This latest row was trigger by nothing more controversial than that. OK, I'm quite happy to accept that they may be committing a logical fallacies - but I can't work out what it is from what you say here. So, to put it in simple terms (I hope) ... If in some general discussion of climate change someone says (as a convenient shorthand) that 97% of climate scientists agree that AGW is a fact, what is the logical fallacy they are committing? I'd like to know so I can avoid it in future myself. -- 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 http://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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: The secret of perception. Particular minds and how they relate to the overall or Cosmic Mind
A question Roger: To recap: there is only one mind (the Perceiver or Cosmic Mind or God) that perceives and acts, doing this through the Surpreme (most dominant) monad. It perceives the whole universe with perfect clarity. Only it can perceive and act . the Supreme Monad continually and instantly updates its universe of monads. Thus each monad knows everything in the universe, but only from its own perspective, and monads being monads, not perfectly clear but distorted. I'm very gratified to hear that I know everything and to finally know that I know everything. :) But, Im interested in the process by which the perfectly clear perception degrades into a distorted one. So there's the supreme monad injecting me continually and instantly with its perfectly clear perceptions. Being windowless, they are not my perceptions at all. Is there something inherent in the act of perception injection which is flawed? Or does the Supreme monad deliberately inject distortions to maintain supremacy? Afterall, in an ideal universe there is no space to differentiate my perspective from anyone elses. This perspective must be part of the perception injection musn't it? Regards. CP. From: rclo...@verizon.net To: rclo...@verizon.net Subject: The secret of perception. Particular minds and how they relate to the overall or Cosmic Mind Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 08:41:12 -0400 The secret of perception. Particular minds and how they relate to the overall or Cosmic Mind The problem of perception in materialistic thinking is that it forces us to think that there is a homunculo us Leibniz has a more complicated understanding of particular minds and how they relate to Cosmic Mind. In Leibniz's metaphysics, there is only one mind (the Perceiver or Cosmic Mind or God) that perceives and acts, doing this through the Surpreme (most dominant) monad. It perceives the whole universe with perfect clarity. Only it can perceive and act, because its monads (which includes our minds) have no windows. The monads (our minds) perceive only indirectly, as the Supreme Monad is the only --what we would call-- conscious mind. We only think and perceive indirectly, as the Supreme Monad continually and instantly updates its universe of monads. Thus there is no problem communing with God (the Cosmic Mind) as we do so continually and necessarily, although only aqccording to our own abilities and perspective. s That we ourselves, not God, appear to be the perceiver is thus only apparent. Also, because Cosmic Mind sees the entire universe as viewed by a kaleidoscope of individual monads, the perceptions it returns to us contains not only what we see (the universe from our own individual perspectives) but what the perceptions of all of the other monads. Thus each monad knows everything in the universe, but only from its own perspective, and monads being monads, not perfectly clear but distorted. Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 6/1/2013 See my Leibniz site at http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Materialism is a joke
This is a theorem, once we suppose the mind is Turing emulable. not actually a theorem if we don't, tho' ? More to the point, it might well be that materialism IS a joke. But Roger's attempt to show this is no closer to the mark than Dr. Johnson kicking his stone was to disproving idealism. It doesn't follow from the fact that materialists believe only physical things exist that they also think all existence is objective. That is at best a straw man at worst a non-sequiteur. By and large materialists attempt to explain mentality in terms of physical things, not deny that there is mentality. So to point to mentality and say 'there you go, proven materialism false' misses the point big time. Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 13:54:05 +0200 Subject: Re: Materialism is a joke From: te...@telmomenezes.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 04 Jun 2013, at 01:20, Roger Clough wrote: Materialism is a joke Materialism is a view of the universe that claims that the only existence in the universe is physical or objective existence--that only objects moving in spacetime exist. Which is disproven by the fact that if you understand that definition, you've proven that there is something beyond objective existence -- subjective or mental existence Even weak materialism is a joke, Roger. This is a theorem, once we suppose the mind is Turing emulable. This makes materialism (the non weak one) even more of a joke. Is there a possible scenario where the mind is not Turing emulable and materialism holds? Telmo. Bruno 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Leibniz's metaphysics is a model of the emerging global brain
l think the angst has more to do with concerns about state power than it has to do with an emergent super brain controlling my noodle with monadic fairy dust, Roger. perhaps the materialists can devise an equivalent explanation of a global mind... Im guessing here but l think they'll stick to the idea that the US government is reading a few emails and not take super global emergent monads seriously. Dreadful thing Common Sense. Regards --- Original Message --- From: Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Sent: 13 June 2013 9:43 AM To: - Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Subject: Leibniz's metaphysics is a model of the emerging global brain Leibniz's metaphysics is a model of the emerging global brain The recent angst over government monitoring of private communications may not so much be due to a dastardly 1984-type plot, but a sign that a giant global brain is emerging all by itself, aided by the growth of world communications and the internet. Incredibly, this has all been foreseen in Leibniz's model of perception, wherein the world is characterized solely by a vast collection of monads, which are thought-forms (mental representations of phytsical brains). The monads themselves do not perceive directly, but are constantly updated by the world-perceptions of the most dominant monad (God or the One). Each monad is thus constantly informed of the activities (perceptions) of all of the other monads. This dominant monad is then the thought-form of the Global Brain, and because of this,there can only be one ultimate perceiver (God or the One). Perhapos the materialists can devise an equivalent explanation of a global mind, but, at least at this moment, I am unable to do so. Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 6/12/2013 See my Leibniz site at http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: In Defense of Penrose. That everybody --including materialists, empiricists and rationalists--is a Platonist
Hi Rog As you have described them a materialist could not be a combination of both rationalism and empiricism, because you have them as diametrically opposed. If reason alone is the source of knowledge, then experience isn't and can't be combined to be. Besides, Materialism is an ontological theory and doesn't give much of a hoot about how knowledge is aquired. More to the point neither rationalism nor empiricism are branches of intuitionism. The moment of inspiration Penrose attributes to the mind connecting with a realm of ideas is neither an act of reason nor sensory experience. Moreover, If logic is to be deductive then, by definition, conclusions must never follow from unexplainable leaps of intuition. If they do they have not been logically deduced, have they? And infact that is Penrose's point : leaps of intuition can not be modelled computationally. logic, ofcourse, can be. since, allegedly, minds can grope for and master facts beyond the scope of deduction, they must be qualitatively different from computer programs which can only deduce things logically. You really seem to have things back to front in this post. Regards --- Original Message --- From: Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Sent: 15 June 2013 1:47 AM To: - Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Subject: In Defense of Penrose. That everybody --including materialists, empiricists and rationalists--is a Platonist In Defense of Penrose. That everybody --including materialists, empiricists and rationalists--is a Platonist Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience. Rationalism is the doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience. Materialism is a combination of both philosophies. These may sound like completely diffierent doctrines, but my point here is that all of these pursuits ultimately rely on intuition. They afre both subbranches of intjuitionism. Why ? Concerning rationalism, even deductive logic requires intuition to arrive at a conclusilon. Concering empiricism, it is fairly obvious to see that experience alone cannot provide us any conclusion. If you dpoubt that, consider Peirce's three categories, in which Secondness is the category of intuion, leading us from an experience to a fact. So Penrose's recent excursion into Platonism should be taken more seriously, for ultimately his criticizers, the empiricists and the rationalists, are both Platonists. Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 6/14/2013 See my Leibniz site at http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Materialists believe apparently strange things, such as that mind is matter.
--- Original Message --- From: Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Sent: 22 June 2013 11:26 AM To: - Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Subject: Materialists believe apparently strange things, such as that mind is matter. Materialists believe apparently strange things, such as that mind is matter. What if mind is matter ? If mind is matter, if thought is particular, can you explain then how such particles think ? Do they mull around until they vote one to be the leader, who organzies the rest of the unruly mob ? And what orders does he give them ? Etc. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: How to tell whether you are a zombie or have a materialist mind
Hi Roger So long as Im not a hapless monad subjected to an influx of incomplete and distorted 'percepts' via a supreme monad, I'm more than happy to be a Zombie. I might be dead but at least I'm not deluded and neither one of us has much of a claim on having free will. Moreover, being a zombie is just an extrapolation of what a materialist is bound to according to his critics, something he can argue against, being a monad on the other hand is a positive theory offered up by idealists as the actual truth. I mean they really believe that stuff! I doubt you will reply but it seems to me that by the id of inds and his conviction that what is real must be simple and indivisible that monads can not be minds. Afterall, the mind is clearly divisible. Ask any blind person whether they can see, or any deaf person whether they can hear. Far from being unified the mind is a divisible conglomerate of interacting parts and thats apparent when you just consider qualia. When you consider thinking itself, and the manner we employ fast and loose heuristics to make judgements rather than logically think issues through, again it is abundantly clear that the mind is a pandemonium of competing routines rather than a unified 'one'. This is all clearly and distinctly apparent subjectively to anyone who cares to look. Identifying minds with monads then contravenes the identity of indiscernibles because whilst we can say the mind is divisible a monad by definition is not. all the best From: rclo...@verizon.net To: rclo...@verizon.net Subject: How to tell whether you are a zombie or have a materialist mind Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 21:26:44 -0400 How to tell whether you are a zombie or have a materialist mind If you can have subjective experiences, then you can neither be a zombie nor have a materialist mind. Most of us should be relieved to know that. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Materialism and Buddhism
Hi Roger This boggles my mind. I am purely matter. ? Should be: This boggles my mind. I am not I. regards. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Materialism and Buddhism Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2013 16:22:11 +0200 Hi Roger, I was searching for my Vasubandhu text (an important idealist buddhist) but realize that your link to Stanford provides a rather good summary. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/ It includes notably Vasubandhu's reference to the dream argument. The yogavasistha also includes many references to idealist tradition in Buddhism and Hinduism. A nice book on the Yogavasistha is the book by Wendy Doniger O' Flaherty Dreams, Illusions and Other Realities (The University of Chicago Press, 1984). Bruno On 03 Jul 2013, at 16:04, Bruno Marchal wrote:H Roger, Buddhism is very vast. Basically all school of philosophy are represented. My own reading of the Hinaya texts makes me believe that they were right at the start idealists, and that they follow somehow the vedas, which are idealists. Mahayana buddhism confirms this idealism. I am not sure of a buddhist who would be materialist in the western sense of the word. Many are weak-materialist, but even this is debatable. I do think there is a trend among some atheists to reinterpret buddhism like it would be coherent with atheism, but few buddhists follows this trend. Then with comp, even weak materialism is made into vitalist like superstition, to be short. Bruno On 03 Jul 2013, at 17:15, Roger Clough wrote:Hi Jason Resch Thanks very much for this, but apparently the Buddhists think that mind is not mental or idea-like as in Idealism, but brick-and-mortar-like, as in western Materialism. Apparently the Buddhists believe, as our materialists do, that mind and matter (ideas and rocks) are One: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/ Perhaps no other classical philosophical tradition, East or West, offers a more complex and counter-intuitive account of mind and mental phenomena than Buddhism.While Buddhists share with other Indian philosophers the view that the domain of the mental encompasses a set of interrelated faculties and processes, they do not associate mental phenomena with the activity of a substantial, independent, and enduring self or agent. Rather, Buddhist theories of mind center on the doctrine of not-self[1] (Pali anatta, Skt.[2] anatma), which postulates that human beings are reducible to the physical and psychological constituents and processes which comprise them. This boggles my mind. I am purely matter. ? Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: Everything List Time: 2013-07-02, 17:21:59 Subject: Re: Materialism and Buddhism I would say Buddhism is closer to idealism than materialism: ?ind precedes all phenomena, mind matters most, everything is mind-made.? -- Gautama Buddha Jason On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 5:19 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Materialism and Buddhism Materialism, since it contains no subjectivity or self, and is atheisti seems to be a form of Buddhism, so that is is possible that it is understandable through Buddhist psychology. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: Hitch
Why does that make the word less usefull? I think its a very useful word. If someone tells me they are an atheist I then know that they do not belive in God. --- Original Message --- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net Sent: 10 July 2013 7:56 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Hitch On 7/9/2013 11:57 AM, John Clark wrote: I agree with Sam Harris that atheist is not a very useful appellation because it only describes someone in contrast to theist. That makes no sense. The word nonfiction is useful but it only describes something in contrast to fiction. I didn't say it was completely useless. But it's less useful than nonfiction because fiction exists. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Hitch
If some one says look, cat I don't know what kind of cat they are refering to. I nevertheless can be confident that they have seen something feline. --- Original Message --- From: Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com Sent: 10 July 2013 8:35 AM To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Hitch On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 5:33 PM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.comwrote: Why does that make the word less usefull? I think its a very useful word. If someone tells me they are an atheist I then know that they do not belive in God. But you don't know what God the atheist doesn't believe in. Jason -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Hitch
there are many words like that which we use without any fuss. The word 'game' is a famous example where different games possess a myriad of properties which are shared by some and not others. In fact there doesn't seem to be a set of properties sufficient to capture the nature of all games. Nevertheless, we use the word without any fuss. And in a way the fact 'God' means different things to different people isn't a problem. If I say someone is an atheist, you can say that this person has some conception of God, whatever it is, and doesn't believe that thing exists. You can say that much at the very least. In the unlikely event that you are really confused about what he means by God you can ask for clarification. What I think has happened here is that a bunch of folk like Harris, unfamiliar with the philosophical territory, have stumbled over the fact that words don't quite get defined in as strict a manner as they thought. They think they have stumbled upon something of import but in reality the 'problem', such that there is one, generalizes easily to much of language and yet language remains as useful as it always was. From: jasonre...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Hitch Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2013 19:33:43 -0500 On Jul 9, 2013, at 5:56 PM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: If some one says look, cat I don't know what kind of cat they are refering to. I nevertheless can be confident that they have seen something feline. True, but cats are things people can see, and this the variety of possible meanings for the word cat is greatly constrained. When someone says god do they mean something that is (check any or all of the following):- immanent- transcendant- uncreated- eternal- intelligent- benevolent- creator- infinite- answerer of prayers- judge- designer- truth- love- universal mind- everything ? Because there are many types of possible and very different meanings for the word god, using the word atheist to describe someone who does not believe in some particular conception of god is much like using the word acatist to describe someone who does not believe in 6-legged bright-pink saber tooth tigers, but nonetheless believes in lions and house cats. Even if you reject the particular god of some particular religious sect, I am confident there are particular selections of the above words that you would admit to believing in. Jason --- Original Message --- From: Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com Sent: 10 July 2013 8:35 AM To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Hitch On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 5:33 PM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Why does that make the word less usefull? I think its a very useful word. If someone tells me they are an atheist I then know that they do not belive in God. But you don't know what God the atheist doesn't believe in. Jason -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Quick Quantum Question.
I have a question for people here who know the issues better than me: I was having an argument about alleged Quantum Immortality/Quantum suicide with some people who argue that because the 2nd law of thermodynamics continues regardless in each universe a 'me' continues within, I should ultimately age away, therefore Quantum immortality is a lost cause in principle. Any counter arguements or agreements with this would be appreciated. chris. _ Exclusive Ed Byrne daily comedy clips on MSN Video http://specials.uk.msn.com/edbyrne/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Quick Quantum Question.
Hello everyone I just want to post a message of thanks for the replies you have all given me. It really is appreciated whether for or against the proposition. by 'eck you're a brainy lot! thank you all very much. Chris. _ Rate your skiving credentials with our Slack-o-meter http://www.slack-o-meter.com --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Penrose and algorithms
cheers Bruno. :) From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Penrose and algorithms Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 18:40:50 +0200 Hi Chris, Le 09-juin-07, à 13:03, chris peck a écrit : Hello The time has come again when I need to seek advice from the everything-list and its contributors. Penrose I believe has argued that the inability to algorithmically solve the halting problem but the ability of humans, or at least Kurt Godel, to understand that formal systems are incomplete together demonstrate that human reason is not algorithmic in nature - and therefore that the AI project is fundamentally flawed. What is the general consensus here on that score. I know that there are many perspectives here including those who agree with Penrose. Are there any decent threads I could look at that deal with this issue? All the best Chris. This is a fundamental issue, even though things are clear for the logicians since 1921 ... But apparently it is still very cloudy for the physicists (except Hofstadter!). I have no time to explain, but let me quote the first paragraph of my Siena papers (your question is at the heart of the interview of the lobian machine and the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus). But you can find many more explanation in my web pages (in french and in english). In a nutshell, Penrose, though quite courageous and more lucid on the mind body problem than the average physicist, is deadly mistaken on Godel. Godel's theorem are very lucky event for mechanism: eventually it leads to their theologies ... The book by Franzen on the misuse of Godel is quite good. An deep book is also the one by Judson Webb, ref in my thesis). We will have the opportunity to come back on this deep issue, which illustrate a gap between logicians and physicists. Best, Bruno -- (excerp of A Purely Arithmetical, yet Empirically Falsifiable, Interpretation of Plotinus¹ Theory of Matter Cie 2007 ) 1) Incompleteness and Mechanism There is a vast literature where G odel¹s first and second incompleteness theorems are used to argue that human beings are different of, if not superior to, any machine. The most famous attempts have been given by J. Lucas in the early sixties and by R. Penrose in two famous books [53, 54]. Such type of argument are not well supported. See for example the recent book by T. Franzen [21]. There is also a less well known tradition where G odel¹s theorems is used in favor of the mechanist thesis. Emil Post, in a remarkable anticipation written about ten years before G odel published his incompleteness theorems, already discovered both the main ³G odelian motivation² against mechanism, and the main pitfall of such argumentations [17, 55]. Post is the first discoverer 1 of Church Thesis, or Church Turing Thesis, and Post is the first one to prove the first incompleteness theorem from a statement equivalent to Church thesis, i.e. the existence of a universalPost said ³complete²normal (production) system 2. In his anticipation, Post concluded at first that the mathematician¹s mind or that the logical process is essentially creative. He adds : ³It makes of the mathematician much more than a clever being who can do quickly what a machine could do ultimately. We see that a machine would never give a complete logic ; for once the machine is made we could prove a theorem it does not prove²(Post emphasis). But Post quickly realized that a machine could do the same deduction for its own mental acts, and admits that : ³The conclusion that man is not a machine is invalid. All we can say is that man cannot construct a machine which can do all the thinking he can. To illustrate this point we may note that a kind of machine-man could be constructed who would prove a similar theorem for his mental acts.² This has probably constituted his motivation for lifting the term creative to his set theoretical formulation of mechanical universality [56]. To be sure, an application of Kleene¹s second recursion theorem, see [30], can make any machine self-replicating, and Post should have said only that man cannot both construct a machine doing his thinking and proving that such machine do so. This is what remains from a reconstruction of Lucas-Penrose argument : if we are machine we cannot constructively specify which machine we are, nor, a fortiori, which computation support us. Such analysis begins perhaps with Benacerraf [4], (see [41] for more details). In his book on the subject, Judson Webb argues that Church Thesis is a main ingredient of the Mechanist Thesis. Then, he argues that, given that incompleteness is an easyone double diagonalization step, see aboveconsequence of Church Thesis, G odel¹s 1931 theorem, which proves incompleteness without appeal to Church Thesis, can be taken as a confirmation of it. Judson Webb concludes that G odel¹s incompleteness theorem is a very lucky event for the mechanist
RE: Hitch
To Jason: Atheism, in its naivety, rejects all these possibilities without even realizing it has done so. How can you possibly speak for atheists generally in this regard? Particularly after the arguments you have been making! What do you know of all the possibilities they have entertained or whether and how they have rejected them? The word atheist is either meaningless (if it applies to specific or certain God/gods), or it is inconsistent/unsupported if you apply it to more general definitions of god. It's a word that seems to carry less than 1 bit of information. How does the word become meaningless if it is applied to a specific God? Up until now you have been arguing that it is the vast variety of meanings the word God can convey that has been the problem, now it is a problem when the meaning is narrowed down? I beginning to think for you 'atheist' is just a useless word because that is how you want things to be. I also don't get how the word 'atheist' is inconsistent if the definition of God is broader. The word atheist depends on two things to be correctly applied. Firstly, that I have something in mind when I use the word God, and that I don't believe it exists. I would be inconsistent if I said i didn't believe in this thing, when actually I did. n that case everyone is an atheist, as you could cook up any definition of some God that person will not believe in. Its a point many atheists make. Jews don't believe Christ was the son of God. Christians don't believe in endless cycles of reincarnation. Relative to both, atheists just lack one further belief. they are all atheists relative to one another. But you're not really getting me. The point was that the word 'atheist' conveys some information regardless of how God is defined and therefore clearly has utility. That if I call someone an atheist you know something about him even before you know his definition of God. ie. that he has one, and that he doesn't believe in it. In other words 'atheist' has use and meaning before we even begin to get into your muddle about the meaning of 'God'. Free thought is also more in line with the a genuine scientific attitude, whereas many sects of atheism are prone to authority and dogmas. Well I would disagree with you there. That sounds like scientism to me. Also, I don't like the blind assumption that thoughts come freely rather than that they are determined. Moreover, I don't think there is a single kind of attitude that is 'genuinely scientific'. I suspect Galileo and Einstein were probably extremely pig headed and dogmatic, whereas Feynman and Darwin liked to play with ideas. All of them made progress in science. I get anxious when I hear people define what scientists should be like. Whatever gets the job done, I say. But thats another argument. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Hitch Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 11:59:16 +0200 On 09 Jul 2013, at 22:58, John Mikes wrote:(See below): I do not fall for Brent's quip that you want to impose your extended (non-religious?) religion on us, so I continue. Whatever you call 'religious' is continuation of millenia-long habits, hard to break. The Hindus have different ones - yet it IS religion. Atheists? Atheism? comes within the package. I am agnostic, BUT not in the God-related sense - agnostic of anything all we can state as 'knowable'. Including proof, evidence, and - yes - appearance, (of course testability included) what you use FOR the mind-body fantasy. It appears to our human 'mind' (in our latest human logic). What I am agnostic about. But logic and proofs are for communicating theories, that is beliefs. Not knowledge. Logic is the most agnostic things we can met. *Now about my 'Steckenpferd': natural numbers. I asked you so many times to no avail. ? You hide behind it is SSOOO simple that you cannot explain it by even simpler cuts or something similar. I explained why it has to be like that. But we can agree on some axioms that I have given. In my 'narrative' I figured that pre-caveman looking at his HANDS, FEET, EYES, and found that PAIR makes sense. (2, not 1). Then (s)he detected that PAIR consists of - well, - a PAIR, meaning 2 similars of ONE. And (s)he counted: ONE, ONE, PAIR (=TWO.) Quite possible. The rest may not exceed the mental capabilities of conventional anthropologists. Here we go into the NATURAL numbers. Some other animals got similarly into 3, 5, maybe the elephant into even more. Some birds can count up to 36. They begin to make aggressive sonf when they heard 36 songs of their species in the neighborhood. I read this a long time ago, ---I have not verified this. Then came the originators of the subsequent Roman (what I know of) numbering - looking at a HAND counting fingers. The group on a palm looks like a V, so it represented 5. With 2 drawn together at their pointed end for 10 (No decimal idea at this
RE: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR
Hi Roger hmmm. sort of. Lowering interest rates, creating cheap money, in part encouraged banks to lend to people they ordinarily would not have. This put more buyers on the market and that increase in demand led to a rise in house prices. Of course, when the interest rates went up, those loans became much more expensive and people found they couldn't afford the mortgages they had taken. People began to default, demand decreased and then so did the house prices. But, there was a whole lot more to it than that. Deregulation, (ie. free market sensibility), allowed banks to collect together and carve up loans into complex derivatives and sell them on as 'high quality' assets. In other words, free market sensibility led to a situation in which banks no longer bore responsibility for the loans they made. They just made the IOUs and then sold them on to pension schemes. Consequently, they loaned to anybody because these derivatives enabled them to get an immediate return on the loans, rather than have to wait 40 years. Crucially, they made loans to people without demanding any kind of equity in the underlying asset. This meant that defaulting became an extremely attractive proposition once interest rates went up. So people defaulted willy nilly because they had no stake in the houses they had bought. So really it was deregulation that buggered things up and generated false hopes and deregulation that led to massively inflated house prices and then bust. Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 20:11:45 -0400 Subject: Re: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR From: jami...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com How can an otherwise well educated and smart person write such stupidity? Capitalism creates wealth out of the sweat of the expolited and enslaved workforce they (the capitalists) keep on an economical/political leash. MONEY does not grow on trees. Doctor, you should know better! Dr. phil - D.Sc. John M On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR There are two ways of cheapening money: mechanically, by printing it, and emoltionally, by making it more easily available (less desirable) by lowering the interest rates. There is also a way of enriching money, and that is by NOT doing either of the above, by not interfering with the market. Here is why. If somebody came along and told you that you can make gasoline out of water, you'd call him a con man. Can't be done. But I am here to tell you that you can create money out of thin air. The govt creates it by printing it, which is bad, for it cheapens money and thus creates no real wealth. This is the mechanical creation of wealth. But wealth can also be achieved by simply believing that it can be done (by naturally rising prices in hopes of future gain). Profit, the magic ingredient of capitalism, is the creation of wealth OUT OF THIN AIR, where nobody loses, if they both choose wisely enough. Both parties can profit-- the seller by receiving a higher price and the buyer by paying a higher price in the hope that he can resell it at an even higher price or make use of it in some other profitable way, such as buying in bulk. So the hope of the seller-- for a brighter day tomorrow-- is what creates wealth in the economy. Before the bubble burst, the housing market was an example of this, except that there was a third party-- the govt-- who made cheap money available by lowering the interest rate. That screwed things up by luring the buyer into thinking that the housing price would rise, but it didn't. That's not a free market, and that's why the bubble burst, because it was an unrealistic hope. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop
RE: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR
@ Telmo Free markets assume rational agents performing symmetrical transactions for their one self-interest. What we have in reality is a centralised secret bureaucracy with unchecked economical and regulatory powers. The 70s through to the 00s was typified by the dismantling of Glass-Steagall such that financial markets were increasingly unregulated rather than regulated. Free rather than governed. The market in CDOs and Credit Default Swaps and all the other derivatives at the center of the GFC was not regulated. The Big Banks like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns leveraged themselves to the hilt ... unchecked. The event that sent liquidity in the economy into cardiac arrest was the refusal of Hank Paulson to intervene in the failure of Lehman Bros. The refusal of government to interfere. What de-fribullated the economy? As bitter a pill as it must be for market fundamentalists to swallow recovery was instigated by bail outs and intervention. That's the irony isn't it? That faith in Adam Smith's invisible hand in fact nurtured the growth of financial institutions that became 'too big to fail'. It ended up cementing the requirement of government to intervene in finance. Interest rates though, they can go up and down and be fiddled with by government for decades without triggering the kind of crisis witnessed in 2008. From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 17:22:49 +0200 On 16 Jul 2013, at 16:08, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 2:09 AM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Roger hmmm. sort of. Lowering interest rates, creating cheap money, in part encouraged banks to lend to people they ordinarily would not have. This put more buyers on the market and that increase in demand led to a rise in house prices. Of course, when the interest rates went up, those loans became much more expensive and people found they couldn't afford the mortgages they had taken. People began to default, demand decreased and then so did the house prices. But, there was a whole lot more to it than that. Deregulation, (ie. free market sensibility), allowed banks to collect together and carve up loans into complex derivatives and sell them on as 'high quality' assets. In other words, free market sensibility led to a situation in which banks no longer bore responsibility for the loans they made. We haven't had a free market in the western world for a long time now. Banks loan money that, in turn, they borrowed from the fed (or the ECB, or...). Central banks have the power to create money out of thin air. They control the supply of money. This is not capitalism, it's something else. Something insane. Free markets assume rational agents performing symmetrical transactions for their one self-interest. What we have in reality is a centralised secret bureaucracy with unchecked economical and regulatory powers. I agree. We assist to a criminal perversion of capitalism. It seems to me that there are evidences that this has been prepared between the assassination of Kennedy and the election of Nixon. In a real free market, I would be able to loan you money and act like a bank myself. The big banks would have to make do with the money reserves they had. And the worst is yet to come when you see how Obama is handling the TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement). I hear also often in that context the idea that corporation are person, which is a non sense, and a real threat on the people. But Obama's NDAA 2012 is quite clear, and is literally a confession of terrorism. For now I am waiting for a serious inquest for 9/11, as the official conspirary theory makes less and less sense to me. In fact they have not yet provided one evidence for their case, except a passport which has survived a fire so hot that steal melted and made a skyscraper collapsing. I am optimist because the bandits made a fatal error: the prohibition of marijuana and drugs. You need an infinite amount of money to maintain craps like that. It might still last for some time, though, and the number of direct and indirect victims will keep growing. But you are right, capitalism is not the problem. It is just the total perversion of the markets by special interests and corporations' unscrupulous deregulating strategies. The middle class (and banks) is taken into hostage, and is already shrinking. Bruno Telmo. They just made the IOUs and then sold them on to pension schemes. Consequently, they loaned to anybody because these derivatives enabled them to get an immediate return on the loans, rather than have to wait 40 years. Crucially, they made loans to people without demanding any kind of equity
RE: We are all naturally racists. Political correctness is likely to get you killed.
That said, Roger's point is not entirely wrong either. I can imagine scenarios where someone acting according to politically incorrect stereotypes could make themselves safer. If I hated Jews I probably wouldn't visit Israel and get killed by a Palestinian bomb. But, for those people that don't mind Jews and do go to Israel and do get killed, are we to blame the bomb or their political correctness? Despite Rog's penetrating evolutionary insight, I can't help but blame the bomb. But Rog doesn't really have the courage of his convictions. What starts out as the meaty and contentious statement 'Racism is good for you' ends up defended by the far less contentious: Mummy says don't talk to strangers no matter what their color. And where exactly is the racism in that? He was supposed to be defending racism but does it by offering an example in which he explicitly removes any hint of it. I feel like banging my head with a bible. From: jasonre...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: We are all naturally racists. Political correctness is likely to get you killed. Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 19:37:49 -0500 On Jul 17, 2013, at 5:21 PM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Rog A taste for fat 'helped us survive' back in the day. Doesnt mean it will be much use now. Infact now it just causes obesity and revulsion in the people you should be trying to attract. I believe the best evidence for the cause of obesity (as well as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and possibly alzheimers) is sugar and refined carbohydrates (not fat). The most convincing source on this that I have found is Gary Taubes book good calories, bad calories. The ecology changes, see? Same with racism. If it ever was of use, unlikely but 'if' it was, nowadays it just induces brain rot in bitter old coots. I agree with this point. Society changes much faster than our genes, and the pace of society's change is only increasing. We carry much evolutary baggage as Carl Sagan said, and it imperils our own existance. It is xenophobia and tribalism that let us value the lives of other groups less than those of our own group, and this is why we live under the threat of nuclear annhilation. That said, Roger's point is not entirely wrong either. I can imagine scenarios where someone acting according to politically incorrect stereotypes could make themselves safer. Jason --- Original Message --- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Sent: 18 July 2013 6:59 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: We are all naturally racists. Political correctness is likely to get you killed. I don´t know why, but Roger don´t seems to understand that. I doubt that he read the responses. 2013/7/17 Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com Roger, can you please stop using this list as an outlet for any thoughts you have about politics and such? If it isn't related to the multiverse or some other fundamental metaphysical issues like consciousness, it doesn't belong here. Jesse On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Political correctness is likely to get you killed. We are all naturally racists. Blame it on Darwin. Zenophobia -- fear or dislike of outsiders--is what has allowed us to survive. Unfortunately the liberalized dictionaries I can find online refer to it as abnormal or irrational. Is it abnormal to be cautious in the presence of strangers ? The left refers to such feelings as politically incorrect. But I don't think it is irrational for a mother to tell her children not to talk to strangers, no matter what their color. We instinctively, for our own safety, are somewhat fearful and unfriendly to strangers, no matter what their color. Jesus said to love our neighbors, but he didn't say to go looking for strangers to love. So IMHO political correctness is likely to get you killed. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out
Re: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction
Hi Alberto I wonder if the phoneme for 'ki' is represented by jagged letters in non Latin based alphabets? --- Original Message --- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Sent: 19 July 2013 2:03 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction the asimilation sound-shape applies also to the letters: the letters K and I of KIKI have a lot of peaks, while B O U and A of BOUBA have more rounded edges. the forms with Sharp edges are more aggressive, and this is know in design. For example the rounded edges of the Apple products, that is also in their window system is less intimidating than the squared forms of the Windows and Unix systems. It may be said that this is synesthesia is not something arbitrary but an evolutionary adaptation and thus universal. A form with sharp edges can be more dangerous, so the eye detect it fast. While a acute or metallic sound with higher frequency components is produced by rigid objects with open ends, while the opposite happens with low frequency components of bouba are produced by objects less rigid or with non sharp edges. The association is natural. For this reason there are a lot of K, X T, Z sounds in contraculture and young revolutionary movements. and also in marketing. 2013/7/15 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com From a worthwhile thread on Quorahttp://www.quora.com/Psychology/What-are-the-most-awesome-psychological-facts-that-you-know-of . Below are two shapes. One of them is called Kiki and the other is called Bouba. (image http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/bouba.png) Almost all respondents when asked say that the jagged one is kiki and the rounded one is bouba. This can be observed across cultures. This is an innate ability of our brain by which one mode of sensation can cross over into another. Would this kind of universality of human sense-making be likely if the connections between words, shapes, and feelings were purely computational? -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction
Hi Alberto But alphabets are not phonemic are they? And some alphabets are curvy (Thai) where as others are very angular (Chinese) Even in Latin based alphabets there are going to be difficulties with your view I think. The 'c' in 'circle' is essy and soft. But the 'c' in 'cut' is sharp and 'angular'. Same 'curvy' letter though. From: agocor...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 00:31:51 +0200 Subject: Re: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction To: everything-list@googlegroups.com If the alphabet is phonethic , I guess so, because the inventors of the alphabets also had these innate associations. 2013/7/19 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com Hi Alberto I wonder if the phoneme for 'ki' is represented by jagged letters in non Latin based alphabets? --- Original Message --- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Sent: 19 July 2013 2:03 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction the asimilation sound-shape applies also to the letters: the letters K and I of KIKI have a lot of peaks, while B O U and A of BOUBA have more rounded edges. the forms with Sharp edges are more aggressive, and this is know in design. For example the rounded edges of the Apple products, that is also in their window system is less intimidating than the squared forms of the Windows and Unix systems. It may be said that this is synesthesia is not something arbitrary but an evolutionary adaptation and thus universal. A form with sharp edges can be more dangerous, so the eye detect it fast. While a acute or metallic sound with higher frequency components is produced by rigid objects with open ends, while the opposite happens with low frequency components of bouba are produced by objects less rigid or with non sharp edges. The association is natural. For this reason there are a lot of K, X T, Z sounds in contraculture and young revolutionary movements. and also in marketing. 2013/7/15 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com From a worthwhile thread on Quora. Below are two shapes. One of them is called Kiki and the other is called Bouba. (image http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/bouba.png) Almost all respondents when asked say that the jagged one is kiki and the rounded one is bouba. This can be observed across cultures. This is an innate ability of our brain by which one mode of sensation can cross over into another. Would this kind of universality of human sense-making be likely if the connections between words, shapes, and feelings were purely computational? -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR
@ Telmo Hi Telmo The key word here is leveraged. Ultimately, this level of leveraging is only possible because the Fed can create money out of thin air. You'll have to elaborate on that. As far as I am aware the banks were leveraged by money currently in circulation. Loans made by insurance companies, pension schemes, hedge funds etc. Of course, central banks can print money and they will do that in a crisis to ensure liquidity, but Im not aware that they do it to support leverage in investment banks. And they are reluctant to do it at all because of the dangers of inflation. But maybe I don't really get your gist here and you are saying something more fundamental ... In a rational resource based economy, this entire situation would not be possible to begin with. Again, you have the edge here because Im new to economics and had to look up 'resource based economy'. As attractive as the idea seems to me one thing strikes me as essential about it right off the bat and that is that they must emerge rather than get imposed. This, to stop them becoming the very kind autocracy that they don't wish to be. From a brief read I gather there is agreement about that, advocates do not wish to be seen as revolutionary. Given that, we seem stuck with the current system for the time being. If you begin with the dogma that government must control the money supply, then sure. But it might be a bit early to claim that the economy was saved. What I see is western governments accumulating unprecedented levels of debt. China seems to be winning the game, but then what? When I say that in mid sept. 2008 the global market was in cardiac arrest I really mean that. I think there's a strong case that argues capitalism would have come to an end there and then had the central banks not stepped in. Of course, solutions to that issue might cause subsequent problems. An immediate catastrophe was averted but that isn't to say the system is not still in crisis. I can certainly agree with you there. There will be another crisis sooner or later and the question is whether we fix the problems we observed in 2008 (ie. regulate) or carry on as normal... As for China, I think the relationship is pretty symbiotic. China, being an export economy, can't 'win the game' without US Debt. So what you see emerging is less China vs. US and more China + US. My hope is that bitcoin or something like that will finally set us free from the criminals that have been running the financial systems. I don't think you eliminate fraud by decentralizing a currency and a fair amount of fraud has already been associated with bitcoin. Plus, the value of a bitcoin seems to fluctuate wildly. Isn't that the kind of value activity that necessitates central banks in the first place? Whatever currency the future uses it will need to be stable rather than jump and drop in value just because a server crashes or an exchange's database gets hacked. Those are the cyber equivalents of bad weather and a currency needs to ride them. And as a side point, you can't have both bitcoin (money) and a resource based economy (moneyless). Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 10:15:49 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR On 7/18/2013 2:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Also, it's a funny moment in History to pretend that giving this much power to governments does not have consequences. What if the economy is saved but we end up living under a modern global Stasi? This sounded like conspiracy theory stuff a few weeks ago, but what about now? My hope is that bitcoin or something like that will finally set us free from the criminals that have been running the financial systems. I still believe in technology more than I believe in politics. But it's technology that's enabling the global Stasi. If someone had to actually listen to your phonecalls and take notes our privacy would be secure. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
RE: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction
That exist an association does not means that this is a mathematical topological isomorphism in the brain of the humans shaped by genes between the space of shapes and the space of sounds in the form of fourier derivates. Right? I don't know mate, you tell me. o statistically, acute sounds in phonetic alphabets is expected to b associated with more jagged letters and viceversa. it does not go beyond that. right. Maybe the designers were just having an off day when it came to 'c'. 'T' definitely looks like a tree so I'm sure your onto something. :) From: agocor...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 02:25:26 +0200 Subject: Re: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction To: everything-list@googlegroups.com That exist an association does not means that this is a mathematical topological isomorphism in the brain of the humans shaped by genes between the space of shapes and the space of sounds in the form of fourier derivates. Right? Things are not that way. An association is an association, so statistically, acute sounds in phonetic alphabets is expected to b associated with more jagged letters and viceversa. it does not go beyond that. (alphabets are phonetic, most of them, scripting systems have not to be alphabetic nor phonetic, can be ideographic, like chiness in which case it is meaningless to associate ) 2013/7/19 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com Hi Alberto But alphabets are not phonemic are they? And some alphabets are curvy (Thai) where as others are very angular (Chinese) Even in Latin based alphabets there are going to be difficulties with your view I think. The 'c' in 'circle' is essy and soft. But the 'c' in 'cut' is sharp and 'angular'. Same 'curvy' letter though. From: agocor...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 00:31:51 +0200 Subject: Re: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction To: everything-list@googlegroups.com If the alphabet is phonethic , I guess so, because the inventors of the alphabets also had these innate associations. 2013/7/19 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com Hi Alberto I wonder if the phoneme for 'ki' is represented by jagged letters in non Latin based alphabets? --- Original Message --- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Sent: 19 July 2013 2:03 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Cross Modal Synesthetic Abstraction the asimilation sound-shape applies also to the letters: the letters K and I of KIKI have a lot of peaks, while B O U and A of BOUBA have more rounded edges. the forms with Sharp edges are more aggressive, and this is know in design. For example the rounded edges of the Apple products, that is also in their window system is less intimidating than the squared forms of the Windows and Unix systems. It may be said that this is synesthesia is not something arbitrary but an evolutionary adaptation and thus universal. A form with sharp edges can be more dangerous, so the eye detect it fast. While a acute or metallic sound with higher frequency components is produced by rigid objects with open ends, while the opposite happens with low frequency components of bouba are produced by objects less rigid or with non sharp edges. The association is natural. For this reason there are a lot of K, X T, Z sounds in contraculture and young revolutionary movements. and also in marketing. 2013/7/15 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com From a worthwhile thread on Quora. Below are two shapes. One of them is called Kiki and the other is called Bouba. (image http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/bouba.png) Almost all respondents when asked say that the jagged one is kiki and the rounded one is bouba. This can be observed across cultures. This is an innate ability of our brain by which one mode of sensation can cross over into another. Would this kind of universality of human sense-making be likely if the connections between words, shapes, and feelings were purely computational? -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received
RE: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR
Thanks Telmo That sheds a little more light on where you're coming from. I watched those videos with interest and found the Austrian school fascinating. Apologies in advance for the length of this post and for the howling errors in reasoning it undoubtedly contains. I’m just a beginner! So the Australian school sees the interest related activities of a central bank to have a distorting effect on the pool of information available to market participants and that this distortion is responsible for booms and busts. i.e. Artificially high interest rates gives investors the impression that people are saving for future consumption, when in fact they might not be. And so on. But the central banks are not secretive about the fluctuations in interest rates they impose, the exact increases/decreases they make are available and are frequently reviewed. The reasons they are imposed are out in the open. In other words, it should be possible to adjust for central bank activity and invest wisely. Why doesn't that happen? As far as I can tell, the spectre of market fundamentalism lurks behind the scenes in the Austrian school. The view is that the market behaves rationally in the absence of regulation. It doesn't entertain the idea that human understanding is inherently distorted and fallible and that errors in judgement arise quite naturally. I depart from the Austrian school at this point. If distortion is just part of the human condition then an argument for regulation re-emerges. Of course, if the central bank is the only source of distortion then it needs to be gotten rid of. But is it really a major culprit? Boom bust cycles existed long before central banks, so they can not be a necessary cause. And we see wild 'boom busts' in decentralized systems like bitcoin. Why? You say the hope is that it will just 'settle down'. I say it is behaving as any decentralized system would. Its acute in bitcoin because it is the classical fiat currency. It is anchored by nothing but perception of value and is therefore blown this way and that by the naturally distorted perceptions of those who participate in it. Like you I wish the system was more equitable. But is bitcoin equitable? I don't think so. From its conception it creates a natural bitcoin aristocracy because as time goes on it gets harder and harder to mine coins and, as usual, an individual's ability to gather resources depends on the power they already have. Rich people can afford bigger and better computers to crunch numbers, me with my zx81, well … im screwed. And that has happened. The majority of bit coins are owned by the minority of participants. If bitcoin were to become a global currency an oligarchy is already in place to wield injustice upon the 99.% of us. Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:58:47 -0400 Subject: Re: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR From: jami...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Nobody raised the point that we are living in the aura of some obsolete dream about a world that is long gone and 'apply' the same words to regulate our lives in an advanced (completely changed) world (system) 2-300 years later. The world changed. We are obsolete. Nobody 'owns' NATURE, the environment (agricultural(?) and mining(!) products), forests, prairies and their ecosystems (from wood to wolves) nor 'water' and should not 'sell' those items for profit. It is only the activity to bring them about that may charge for reimbursement. Not even the access to it. It is not different from 'owning' persons. We not only need a new law-construct, we need a new perspective. Freedom means to feel free to do ANYTHING without any infringement of anybody else's freedom. On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 1:15 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 7/18/2013 2:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Also, it's a funny moment in History to pretend that giving this much power to governments does not have consequences. What if the economy is saved but we end up living under a modern global Stasi? This sounded like conspiracy theory stuff a few weeks ago, but what about now? My hope is that bitcoin or something like that will finally set us free from the criminals that have been running the financial systems. I still believe in technology more than I believe in politics. But it's technology that's enabling the global Stasi. If someone had to actually listen to your phonecalls and take notes our privacy would be secure. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
RE: Whistleblower: Bradley Manning
Hi Rog I'm getting the feeling here, that you're not a liberal... is that right? :) From: rclo...@verizon.net To: rclo...@verizon.net Subject: Whistleblower: Bradley Manning Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 07:31:38 -0400 Message body Whistleblower: Bradley Manning Manning could have done himself a favor by not going sdirectly to the press, but sharing the info with his congressman. Whistleblowers seem often to be self-righteous liberals. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at ANBSP;HREF=HTTP: RogerClough? independent.academia.eduhttp://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: The deadly legacy of another lib, Rachel Carson
Weird, because DDT isn't banned when used for disease vector control, which kind of scuppers your post at the get go. Its well established that insects quickly develop resistance to DDT. So it isn't especially effective. In some respects its counter productive. The resistance confers other genetic advantages that make the resistant mosquitoes better breeders. Nets work well. But the average net is too expensive for the average person in malaria effected areas. Its poverty thats killing. Not liberals. From: rclo...@verizon.net To: theoretical_phys...@yahoogroups.com Subject: The deadly legacy of another lib, Rachel Carson Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 07:26:10 -0400 The deadly legacy of another lib, Rachel Carson Because of Rachel Carson, who is thought by some to have made up some if not all of the data in her book Silent Spring, DDT is now illegal in Africa and most other places. Thus Even though welfare organizations are frantically handing out mosquito netting, a child dies every minute from malaria. Malaria claims 660,000 lives per year, 90% of those in Africa. more than 1400 kids lose their lives to a mosquito bite every day. In addition, Nile fever is growing in incidence now in America. Robins, whom Carson supposedly helped to save, are known, along with finches and some other birds, to serve as reservoirs for the spread of Nile Fever and possibly Denghy fever, a painful disease of the joints. I noticed that here in MD, my back yard is a favored hangout for robins and yellow finches. Authorities believe that a good way to combat this is to increase the diversity of birdlife. since not all birds serve as reservoirs. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that deer, who already are known to spread Lyme disease, might also be reseervoirs for Nile and Denghy fever. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The stupid legacy of another crackpot, Roger Clough
Hi Alberto A video of one man questioning Carson's conclusions doesnt support the claim she fabricated evidence. All it does is show that some scientists disagree with her results. Not unusual in science. Of course sceptics will argue evironmentalism is politicised science. Given that most of the evidence counters the sceptic he has no where else to run and has to resort to political name calling. Its an attempt by the sceptic to divert the debate away from the science. By the way, Michael Crichton, the man whose video you turn to, was a liberal. You know that, right? Attacking liberals whilst depending on them isnt a good look. --- Original Message --- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Sent: 3 August 2013 8:16 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The stupid legacy of another crackpot, Roger Clough The video that I linked is a good debunk of al the Carson paranoia. By a known scientist, not an enemy of humanity or people´s enemy like me, well paid by the forces of Evil. I will add nothing more to this off topic 2013/8/2 Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com So progressives are now lumped together with Mao... in your brain so glad I do not have to live inside that place you call home. You are also wrong about why DDT spraying is no longer being used to control the Malaria mosquito (and other tropical disease spreading mosquito species). As has been amply pointed out, the driving factor in these decisions to stop using DDT, in cases where this has occurred, across both Asia, Africa and elsewhere, has, in fact, been the rapid rise of resistance to DDT in the targeted mosquito species. Perhaps rightwing nut jobs cannot seem to comprehend this rise in resistance because they -- emphatically -- do not believe in evolution and so find it difficult to understand how over the span of many generations, being slathered with a specific poisons a species will evolve a resistance. On Friday, August 2, 2013 12:47:27 PM UTC-4, spudb...@aol.com wrote: On DDT, because it hasn't been used in Africa to supress the Anopholes misquito, millions have died. and yeah, Craig, it was to assuage Progressive's sensibilities, so we won't have a Silent Spring. It reminds me of Mao's Great Leap Forward from 1958-62 which caused a famine in China costing 36 million lives. Courtesy, the progressive policies of Mao. If you're going to own environmental safety, then you're going to own the failure of planning conducted by progressive orgs world-wide. This isn't a matter of opinion, its a matter of fact. So much for the scientific socialism that progressives have willingly inherited. Mitch -Original Message- From: Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com To: everything-list everyth...@googlegroups. com Sent: Fri, Aug 2, 2013 12:29 pm Subject: Re: The stupid legacy of another crackpot, Roger Clough No, it wuz the Libruls and their evil propaganda against delicious DDT. On Friday, August 2, 2013 1:35:31 AM UTC-4, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Because of Roger Clough, a less than mediocre Lutheran apologist who considers himself an astute interpreter of Leibniz, a formerly bright corner of the internet, the Everything List, has gone mostly dark due to the intellectual torpor and carelessness that seems to surround everything Clough says like the clouds of pestilence that surround the four horses of the apocalypse. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Roger is a rather lonely man who feels empty inside and yet also feels an irrational compulsion to flee this emptiness by trying hard to wrap it up in pseudo-profound mumbo jumbo and foist it on poor, unsuspecting readers of reading lists. RIP Everything List -- 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-li...@ googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups. com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For
Re: The stupid legacy of another crackpot, Roger Clough
Yep. He was. --- Original Message --- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net Sent: 3 August 2013 2:44 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The stupid legacy of another crackpot, Roger Clough On 8/2/2013 5:27 PM, chris peck wrote: By the way, Michael Crichton, the man whose video you turn to, was a liberal. You know that, right? He's a global warming denier. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Fw: antidepressants and suicide
Hi Alby Roger is pro-drugs in the thread below you dozy dipstick. ;) Its the liberal who is arguing for soft headed psycotherapy. its the pharmaceutical company vs. The lilly livered liberal script. Get with the program you silly sausage! --- Original Message --- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Sent: 5 August 2013 11:59 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Cc: theoretical_physics theoretical_phys...@yahoogroups.com, theoretical_physics_board theoretical_physics_bo...@yahoogroups.com, - mindbr...@yahoogroups.com mindbr...@yahoogroups.com, 4dworldx 4dwor...@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: Fw: antidepressants and suicide Hi Roger, When did you stopped being a depressed, drug dependent, liberal and became an hyperactive conservative? 2013/8/5 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Sorry I forgot to put in the linK ; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15699293 Hi Chaotic Inflation There is indeed a positive association between TCAs and suicide, (how strong it doesn't say) but otherwise there is a negative association. I wouldn't be surprised however, if there was a positive association for ALL antidepressants, as they don't work perfectly anyway. From my experience, I would say that they only reduce depression at best about 50%. The relationship between antidepressant medication use and rate of suicide. Gibbons RD, Hur K, Bhaumik DK, Mann JJ. Source Center for Health Statistics, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. RESULTS: The overall relationship between antidepressant medication prescription and suicide rate was not significant. Within individual classes of antidepressants, prescriptions for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and other new-generation non-SSRI antidepressants (eg, nefazodone hydrochloride, mirtazapine, bupropion hydrochloride, and venlafaxine hydrochloride) are associated with lower suicide rates (both within and between counties). A positive association between tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) prescription and suicide rate was observed. Results are adjusted for age, sex, race, income, and county-to-county variability in suicide rates. Higher suicide rates in rural areas are associated with fewer antidepressant prescriptions, lower income, and relatively more prescriptions for TCAs. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] ee my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough - Receiving the following content - From: Chaotic Inflation Receiver: 4dwor...@yahoogroups.com,4dwor...@yahoogroups.com, theoretical_physics_bo...@yahoogroups.com, theoretical_phys...@yahoogroups.com Time: 2013-08-05, 04:38:01 Subject: Re: Re: Re: [Theoretical_Physics] Re: [4DWorldx]Fw:Re:Re:[Theoretical_Physics_Board] OK, but think about this dude you need to get off this obsession with liberals that you have and analyze the facts look up Prozac defense and homicide rate with SSRIs . also look up the Columbine incident and how that's linked to antidepressants. and if this wasn't true, they wouldn't have had to shell out millions of dollars in class action lawsuits, and psychiatrists themselves are now railing against the widespread overuse of antidepressants.. this has nothing to do with politics. From: Roger Clough To: theoretical_physics ; 4dworldx 4dwor...@yahoogroups.com; theoretical_physics_board Sent: Monday, August 5, 2013 4:21 AM Subject: Re: Re: Re: [Theoretical_Physics] Re: [4DWorldx] Fw:Re:Re:[Theoretical_Physics_Board] OK, but think about this Hi Chaotic Inflation I think those are typical liberal lies. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough - Receiving the following content - From: Chaotic Inflation Receiver: theoretical_phys...@yahoogroups.com,4dwor...@yahoogroups.com, theoretical_physics_bo...@yahoogroups.com, theoretical_phys...@yahoogroups.com Time: 2013-08-04, 00:33:01 Subject: Re: Re: [Theoretical_Physics] Re: [4DWorldx] Fw:Re:Re:[Theoretical_Physics_Board] OK, but think about this From what I've read some (prozac especially, but also others) cause violent tendencies in teenagers. the side effects are vastly different in children with developing brains. From: Roger Clough To: 4dworldx 4dwor...@yahoogroups.com; theoretical_physics Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2013 11:00 AM Subject: Re: Re: [Theoretical_Physics] Re: [4DWorldx] Fw: Re:Re:[Theoretical_Physics_Board] OK, but think about this Hi Chaotic Inflation Antidepressants are probably overprescribed, but they only help you if you are depressed, otherwise I am told that they have no effect (they surely don't make you high), so why would anybody keep paying even the copay ? My suspicion is that they are useful and so needed. Without God, it's a depressing world. Dr.
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hello Dr. Standish If I may play devil's advocate for a post it seems to me that the question over duration required for an optimized system to evolve is only a minor aspect of the argument presented in this paper. More seriously it concerns the mechanics of such an evolution. To use a computer analogy: It doesn't concern for example the developing fitness of specific algorithms written in a language but the fitness of the language itself. Many algorithms can be written in C and we can store these algorithms in files etc. However, if we change the mechanics of C, if we change the compiler, then these files become useless. Perhaps C requires a semi-colon to designate the end of a line of code. If this changes even slightly, perhaps the requirement becomes a comma rather than semi-colon, then all those code files are effectively useless and will no longer compile in to workable algorithms. Compare that with the degree to which we can fiddle with the specifics of the code files themselves. We can randomly change strings, constants, all manner of things and there will be a set of changes that result in files that compile into runnable algorithms. Different ones than before, with semantic 'bugs' perhaps but there will be a further subset of new algorithms which do the same as before, more or less, but more efficiently. And in this analogy that is exactly what evolution requires. The point here is surely that in the former case even a subtle change to the compiler is instantly catastrophic and is therefore different to usual selective techniques which involve the accumulation of little changes over time. Now, I'm very very possibly barking up the very wrong tree here, because Ive never been the sharpest tool in the box, and maybe you have addressed that and I can't see it. I can see how if all the different codes exist at some point one can emerge as a winning replicator but I can't see how there can be development of a single code into a winning replicator and I think that's the main issue at stake. What is the mechanism for that? Or have I just lost the plot? All the best Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 02:21:19 +0100 Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong From: te...@telmomenezes.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 7:35 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 12:50 PM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: if one is to believe in a god that created everything, then one also has to believe that this god was malicious enough to plant an incredible amount of false evidence: the fossil record, Yes, but that's not the only reason God would be a sadistic monster. He could have produced complex animals like you and me just by snapping His fingers, but instead he decided to do it by way of Evolution. And Evolution has made some beautiful things but the process itself is not beautiful, in fact its cruelty is ASTRONOMICAL, for every tiny advance millions die horrible deaths. There is no getting around it, Evolution is a hideously cruel process and if I were God I would have done things very very differently, among other things I would have made intense physical pain a logical impossibility, but unfortunately that punk Yahweh got the job and not me. According to NSA records you didn't get the job because you ticked YES at the QM box and NO at possibility of computationalism box. That's why we got Yahweh, because Bruno wrote this test is not decidable and walked out of the room. Concerning the rest of us getting the job (whether we finally all wound up getting the damned job, because everything's a janitor job, even being god... cue strange music...), that's classified apparently. PGC It allows annoys me how christians justify all the suffering and overall shittiness of existence with: ah, but that is necessary because God wanted us to have free will. Fuck free will! I would much rather exist in a state of constant bliss, unable to feel anything but orgasm x1000, no pain, no boredom, no negative emotion whatsoever, forever. Instead I get free will. Great. In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe it was created by some sort of god, but the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI firmly believed that the entire universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who lived in perpetual fear of the time they called The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief were small, blue creatures with more than fifty arms each. They were therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel. - Douglas Adams, in The
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Prof. Standish Unfortunately my subscription to Athens ran out a long time ago and I don't have access to the paper you mention. I'm still not sure you've addressed the crux of the argument. Lets say you have a bunch of codons that when processed by a replicating mechanism spit out a bunch of amino acids. Lets say the replicating system isn't optimized and has low redundancy so that codonA - aa1 codonB - aa2 codonC - aa3 Now there is a random mutation in the mechanism that ought to offer some redundancy: codonA - aa1 codonB - aa1 codonC - aa2 codonD - aa3 Unless there has been a concomitant mutation in the DNA strands the mechanism will process, this 'optimization' is in fact catastrophic. Far from being optimized the fidelity of the system has dramatically dropped and the amino acids spat out by the mechanism will be hugely error prone. The phenotype will be useless. This is what Dawkins means when he says : “Any change in the genetic code ... would have an instantly catastrophic effect, not just in one place but throughout the whole organism. If any word ... changed its meaning, so that it came to specify a different amino acid, just about every protein in the body would instantaneously change ... and this would spell disaster.” That kind of stumps the possibility of natural selection within individual coding mechanisms. They can not develop from low to high fidelity. It doesn't matter how much time you give them. Er, competition? If you can see how all different codes existed at one point at different parts of the globe, and you can see that the region boundaries are unstable (no mechanism like speciation, or bilingualism, to keep different codes distinct), then it follows that the code with the best replication ability will ultimately dominate. Yes, like I said, I can see that. I can see that there could be competition between a number of different coding strategies. One strategy could win out over the others in terms of fidelity. But whilst that is natural selection it isn't really evolution. This is why Stathan is keen to point out that there *are* other coding strategies found in nature. Probably, there is an abiogenetic story whereby coding strategies pop out of the primordial soup quite randomly and that therefore this isn't quite the issue for evolutionary theory Stathan supposes. He hints at that with reference to Dawkins. Alternatively, maybe Im just barking up the wrong tree. Wouldn't be the first time... Best Regards Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 14:04:07 -0400 Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong From: yann...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com According to Smolin's Fecund Universe hypothesis since verified by Poplawski's GR spin theory,it's generations of universes all the way down On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 12:57 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I doesn't appeal to me. It seems to be just an otiose layer of explanation on top of the universe just is, but it seems possible. Brent On 8/6/2013 8:10 AM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Does Deism appeal to you at all Brent? -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, Aug 6, 2013 12:14 am Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong On 8/5/2013 6:21 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: It allows annoys me how christians justify all the suffering and overall shittiness of existence with: ah, but that is necessary because God wanted us to have free will. He apparently also wanted us to have leukemia, AIDS, plague, tsunamis, volcanoes, malaria, polio, influenza, and smallpox. None of which have anything to do with 'free will', except maybe polio and smallpox which we DON'T have because human beings found a way to suppress them. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Prof. Standish Thanks so much for the offer. I actually hunted the paper down from a link in the original springer resource you posted. Some of it flies over my head, but not all of it, so I'll persevere... ISTM that you are implicitly assuming that these replicating hypercycles only emerged once, whereas I would think that replicating RNA probably arose many times quite easily when life wasn't around to gobble them up. Not really, but re-reading your original post I'm actually quite persuaded by the idea that even if these replicating mechanisms emerged very rarely it would be possible and enough to invoke the anthropic principle. After all, it only had to emerge once in the whole universe for these questions to get asked... Whats niggling me though is something else. Dawkins sometimes intimates that the current code was something that itself evolved from low to high fidelity. For reasons I've made I can't see how that can be so. Evolution is a process where beneficial but random changes accumulate and are passed on through successive generations. But if a random mutation in the code results in catastrophe as Dawkins acknowledges then that can't happen. This is to say that if the code evolved then that evolution could not be Darwinian in nature. I find it reassuring that there is research underway addressing this issue. I found this paper over my lunch break: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10696.full They emphasize ambiguity over error in early coding mechanisms and suggest a kind of Lamarkian evolutionary dynamic that existed prior to and eventually gave way to Darwinian evolutionary dynamics. Horizontal vs. vertical heredity etc. In many ways that might be seen as heresy by the biological community but laymen like me don't mind a little heresy here and there. We don't know any better. :) Anyway, it seems to offer the following response to Statham. His argument is underpinned by the assumption that all evolution is Darwinian. If one sheds that assumption then the code could evolve without the consequent catastrophe. All the best. Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 14:02:33 +1000 From: li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong Hi Chris, You can probably find all that you need here http://physis.sourceforge.net/ It looks like it is a defunct research programme, but maybe you could follow up citations. I could probably dig out an e-copy of the ECAL paper from my institution's Springerlink subscription, if you're really interested. Further comments interspersed On Wed, Aug 07, 2013 at 01:03:36AM +, chris peck wrote: Hi Prof. Standish Unfortunately my subscription to Athens ran out a long time ago and I don't have access to the paper you mention. I'm still not sure you've addressed the crux of the argument. Lets say you have a bunch of codons that when processed by a replicating mechanism spit out a bunch of amino acids. Lets say the replicating system isn't optimized and has low redundancy so that codonA - aa1 codonB - aa2 codonC - aa3 Now there is a random mutation in the mechanism that ought to offer some redundancy: codonA - aa1 codonB - aa1 codonC - aa2 codonD - aa3 Unless there has been a concomitant mutation in the DNA strands the mechanism will process, this 'optimization' is in fact catastrophic. That is what I was referring to as the boundary being unstable. The two schema cannot coexist at the same location. What I had in mind was that they existed contemporaneously, but in different physical locations - eg different rock pools perhaps. ISTM that you are implictly assuming that these replicating hypercycles only emerged once, whereas I would think that replicating RNA probably arose many times quite easily when life wasn't around to gobble them up. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Brent But random mutations *don't* result in catastrophe. Your body has hundreds of cells with copying errors in their DNA. Of course only those in gametes can get passed to progeny. But even gamete DNA can have copying errors without catastrophic results. When youre talking about common-all-garden mutations within strands of DNA ofcourse there is no catestrophic result. Infact, evolution via natural selection depends on the possibility of copying error. Its a good source of mutation. The genetic code is high fidelity but not *that* high fidelity. When you're talking about mutation and evolution of the code itself, between the mapping of codons and amino acids for example then that is genuinely catestrophic. That doesn't seem to me to be contentious, btw. All the best Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 20:28:41 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong On 8/8/2013 8:10 PM, chris peck wrote: Hi Prof. Standish Thanks so much for the offer. I actually hunted the paper down from a link in the original springer resource you posted. Some of it flies over my head, but not all of it, so I'll persevere... ISTM that you are implicitly assuming that these replicating hypercycles only emerged once, whereas I would think that replicating RNA probably arose many times quite easily when life wasn't around to gobble them up. Not really, but re-reading your original post I'm actually quite persuaded by the idea that even if these replicating mechanisms emerged very rarely it would be possible and enough to invoke the anthropic principle. After all, it only had to emerge once in the whole universe for these questions to get asked... Whats niggling me though is something else. Dawkins sometimes intimates that the current code was something that itself evolved from low to high fidelity. For reasons I've made I can't see how that can be so. Evolution is a process where beneficial but random changes accumulate and are passed on through successive generations. But if a random mutation in the code results in catastrophe as Dawkins acknowledges then that can't happen. But random mutations *don't* result in catastrophe. Your body has hundreds of cells with copying errors in their DNA. Of course only those in gametes can get passed to progeny. But even gamete DNA can have copying errors without catastrophic results. This is to say that if the code evolved then that evolution could not be Darwinian in nature. Sure it could. Random mutations, most of which are bad, many of which are neutral, and a few of which are beneficial relative to subsequent natural selection. If DNA copying were perfect there could be no evolution, so if some organisms developed with perfect (or just, too good) error correcting codes, they almost certainly got left behind in the evolutionary arms race and have left no descendants. Brent I find it reassuring that there is research underway addressing this issue. I found this paper over my lunch break: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10696.full They emphasize ambiguity over error in early coding mechanisms and suggest a kind of Lamarkian evolutionary dynamic that existed prior to and eventually gave way to Darwinian evolutionary dynamics. Horizontal vs. vertical heredity etc. In many ways that might be seen as heresy by the biological community but laymen like me don't mind a little heresy here and there. We don't know any better. :) Anyway, it seems to offer the following response to Statham. His argument is underpinned by the assumption that all evolution is Darwinian. If one sheds that assumption then the code could evolve without the consequent catastrophe. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Chris and John The paper I linked to describes a evolutionary dynamic which emphasizes horizontal over vertical genetic transfer. I think it is described in the paper as Lamarckian because changes to the coding mechanism can occur in their model within a single generation of organisms rather than over the course of many. I understand (perhaps incorrectly?) that horizontal transfer is not uncommon within bacteria and other 'simple' organisms. And of course in the evolutionary epoch they discuss organisms were far simpler again. I suspect also that their model goes against the neo-Darwinian grain insofar as it possibly emphasizes group selection over genetic selection. They suggest that in this very early period it was in fact communities of organisms that were being selected for or against rather than individual genes. But, that might be a misread. They say: The key element in this dynamic is innovation-sharing, an evolutionary protocol whereby descent with variation from one ‘‘generation’’ to the next is not genealogically traceable but is a descent of a cellular community as a whole Ofcourse, it might be the case that this kind of adaptation sits happily under the umbrella of Darwinism even neo-Darwinism. In fact as a layman I am (perhaps naively?) unconcerned about the taxonomy of their model within evolutionary theory. What really interests me isn't even the plausibility of their model but rather the bare possibility that it might offer an argument against Statham's in this thread's original post. All the best. From: cdemorse...@yahoo.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 17:15:13 -0700 John, Russell ~ Speaking from the perspective of information science, one can abstract out the underlying information encoding scheme(s), actually employed by life by conscious self-aware life as well, which could be any number of suitable candidates. We know of three known currently employed encoding schemes DNA, RNA (RNA viruses for example) and epigenetic coding of how this DNA is expressed that can cross generational boundaries and mutate or change the resulting phenotype expressed in progeny.As Russell pointed out there is the matter of memes acting as a kind of encoded piece of cultural DNA that can culturally form individuals even after many generations have past. In some senses, in more advanced cultural creatures such as our species -- though some would argue that last statement J -- ideas transmit and evolve in a Darwinian manner.If we abstract away the details of how information is encoded, preserved, transmitted etc. and deal instead in the abstract, we can avoid a whole mess of confusion and focus in on the essential common characteristics that are shared.From this perspective what is required in order for evolution to occur is the following sequence: 1) A new abstract information entity or a mutation on an existing one is introduced into an individual organism or a population of individual organisms through some process. This process may be hereditary, in the special case of a mutated or new information entity that has been introduced in some earlier generation and is going through a new generation of natural selection.2) This new information must be remembered by one or more individuals in the initial population set and be able to be encoded and preserved in a durable and high fidelity manner in those individuals.3) It must also be able to be transmissible across generational boundaries and through some abstract hereditary process (again leaving out all details) and durable high quality copies of the original must exist and also be able to be expressed in the individuals in these successive generations – e.g. the process of heredity stated in an abstract way. Copying flaws and mutations are of course allowed and considered integral to the way things actually work.4) Crucially, in each succeeding generation, it must undergo and survive a process of Darwinian selection being driven by the given environmental pressures in its world. Only the abstract information entities that make it through each generational selection obstacle course survive – amongst some individual members in the population of the succeeding generation – to be passed on to the next generation in the evolutionary chain.5) Many generations of natural selection must occur – i.e. loop through steps 1,2,3,4 – in order to enable the bubbling up of beneficial mutations and the weeding out of harmful mutations. How many generations does it take? No easy answer for that but certainly more than say two or three. Only when new abstract information entities satisfy and survive through (step number 4) repeated over many generations (step 5) can evolution be said to have occurred.-Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
I'm sure he still posts in some parallel feathers of the dove's tail. :) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 08:00:14 -0400 Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong From: yann...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Is this the topic that stopped Bruno from posting in the everything list? Have we lost Bruno for good?Richard On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 1:59 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/11/2013 7:55 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote: I would not be surprised to find that there is evidence of cross species conglomerates of organisms that have evolved to survive together, in other words that the Darwinian selection mechanism could potentially be extended to take into account both group survival dynamics within one species and in the larger meta-groups of two or more species that get through life together by cooperating across species lines. Yeah, no need to be surprised by dogs and cattle. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Chris d m The papers Ive been reading regard horizontal genetic transfer as a mechanism by which the machinery of translation, transcription and replication evolved. As cellular organisms became more complex this mechanism gives way to vertical genetic transfer which then dominates evolution. They call this hypothetical period the Darwinain Transition. At this point selection at a genetic level takes over. I cant vouch for the ideas plausibility. I think that selection at a genetic level is enough to account for altruism. Hamilton's law predicts that behaviors will be undertaken so long as the benefit multiplied by the degree of genetic relatedness outweighs the cost. This equation gets healthy support from the study of bees, wasps and ants etc where the unusual 2/3 relatedness between female siblings gives rise to unisially co-operative behaviour and between sisters. All the best --- Original Message --- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net Sent: 13 August 2013 4:56 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong On 8/12/2013 9:41 AM, Chris de Morsella wrote: What co-evolutionary traits have been shown to have occurred in dogs and cattle because of their association with humans (so which are therefore part of the equation)? Dogs are just wolves that, thru (un)natural selection have evolved to bond with humans as with a pack. Cattle similarly evolved to be docile and tolerant of humans. For example with sheep -- is sheep dog behavior evolved? Or are they expressing genetic potential that was already innate in their species? That would also be an interesting example, if it can be shown that an evolved set of behaviors (e.g. instincts) developed in those dog species that were bred for working with cattle or sheep that is absent in other dog species that there are epigenetic and/or DNA encoding differences that are related to and underpin the behaviors and traits being observed. Wolves herd sheep too, so there was innate potential. But dogs can also learn a lot of words. I don't know whether wolves can or not. That might be an evolved capability. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Prof. Standish I read your paper 'Evolution in the Multiverse' and the related discussion in your book. I'm not sure I really got it. My original interpretation was wrong, I think, but went something like (by all means laugh at any howlers): there is the plenitude which is everything that could possibly be and it 'exists' as a kind of cloud of quantum superpositions of states waiting to decohere (collapse?). On measurement dechoerence traces out a history for each viable universe with the AP setting the end point, the type of intellegent organisms evolution must meet, with the SSA setting the most likely starting point. In this way, for any universe, the AP and SSA kind of govern the nature of life in the universe and combined can be seen as a kind of selective principle. I then had this image of a bunch of universes allowing life at varying degrees of sophistication peaking at the universe with the ultimate brainy ET. But then I thought hang on, decoherence is copenhagen whereas Prof. Standish is MWI so something is wrong. Im definately in a muddle here... Any pointers would be welcome. All the best. Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 17:58:49 -0700 From: cdemorse...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Brent ~ I follow the logic and am not arguing with it. I was wondering if there is any evidence baked into the DNA so to speak; in other words are there any areas of coding DNA that are known to be (or perhaps suspected of being) linked to and involved with such behavioral traits as herding instinct etc. that have been shown to have evolved in dogs (or more accurately been bred into dogs by human directed breeding for desired traits). I would not be surprised at all to find that there were, and feel pretty certain that a delta mapping of wolf DNA and say a Sheep Collies DNA will show changes in the key sets of genes that would be implicated in these behaviors... that is if we know what they are. Mapping behaviors to genes gets tricky because things as complex as a behavior, such as the instinct to herd sheep, probably draws upon multiple DNA coding sequences located in possibly different genes even. I don't think geneticists really have nailed down how instincts are wired into our genetic heredity -- we have statistical correlations and such, but - perhaps it is my own ignorance, but no clear story as to how these genetically encoded behavior genes actually work -- end to end. While, for example some Newspaper headline may boldly state that scientists have found the gene for aggression say, a deeper read will reveal that what was found was some DNA that may influence whether or not an individual becomes aggressive, for example, but that whether they actually do or not also depends on a lot of other co-factors, making it hard to determine what the trigger chain of events and changes actually is in reality. Very often, it turns out there is an environmental component in how behavioral traits arise in an individual as well. The interplay between hereditary information and the many dynamic processes at work in the organism at each phase: from the transcription phase that ultimately results in mRNA strands becoming used as a template in the ribosome to produce amino acid chains is still too poorly understood -- IMO -- for assertive statements. We hypothesize the genetic component in many behaviors; have found regions of DNA that are implicated in controlling behavior, but the science is still underdeveloped, the genetic maps we have at our disposal far too course and incomplete and our understanding of the many dynamic processes at work still incomplete. But -- [laughing] -- maybe I just need to catch up... it is such a rapidly moving field. -Chris From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 11:56 AM Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong On 8/12/2013 9:41 AM, Chris de Morsella wrote: What co-evolutionary traits have been shown to have occurred in dogs and cattle because of their association with humans (so which are therefore part of the equation)? Dogs are just wolves that, thru (un)natural selection have evolved to bond with humans as with a pack. Cattle similarly evolved to be docile and tolerant of humans. For example with sheep – is sheep dog behavior evolved? Or are they expressing genetic potential that was already innate in their species? That would also be an interesting example, if it can be shown that an evolved set of behaviors (e.g. instincts) developed in those dog species that were bred for working with cattle or sheep that is absent in other dog species that there are
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Chris I think alarm calls are explained adequately by the benefits afforded to individuals in a group that share some genetic material. If you are a monkey with a few brothers and sisters in a troupe and plenty of cousins then a lot of 'your' genes get protected by putting yourself at risk by alarm calls. Whatever genes underpin alarm calling then have a good chance of passing on. If members of another species then derive some benefit from that then that in fact is a form of cheating. There might be mutual cheating insofar as both species might have evolved alarm calling and both noticed the alarm calls of the other species. I dont see the need to invoke group selection here. As for dogs saving babies its not difficult to see the benefits. That dog is made for life by that one risk. Its now king dog. The cats in the neighbourhood must be kicking themselves. They do all the serious symbiotic work keeping the vermin population down and some stupid dog puts on a big display and steals all the limelight. Acts of kindness to complete strangers is harder to explain. I think humans evolved in small groups where genetic relatedness was high. Even though we live in groups of thousands and even millions in cities our behaviour reflects what would be adaptive in much mich smaller groups. All the best --- Original Message --- From: Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com Sent: 14 August 2013 3:05 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong Chris P - I agree, classic Darwinian selection is usually sufficient to explain the presence of traits, such as altruism (which as you noted is not a specifically human one) as long as one extends it to account for group survival fitness. This hypothesis would seem to be supported by a high correspondence of genetic closeness with altruistic behavior. It becomes a little more indirect when for example one considers the case where loose groupings, comprising of multiple species exhibit this behavior. For example in the case of the various monkey and bird species that seem to forage the tropical rain forest together, the individual animal that sounds the alarm call for some predator is increasing its own risk of becoming predated in order to alert individuals who may not even be the same species. I still think however that by increasing the overall group fitness of the loose multi-species confederation that individual benefits, on average. The linkage is however less clear. Altruism however becomes harder to explain - using Darwinian selection -- when it is pure altruism, such as an act of kindness to some complete stranger (that provides no easily discernible benefit to the individual initiating the altruistic act) or even a cross species acts of altruism, which on occasion seem to occur, for example the classic headline say of stray dog jumps into pool saves drowning baby. This pure altruism that occurs between individuals that are not closely related is what interests me most. In these cases what is the fitness payback for the individual who behaves in the altruistic manner; unless it is the indirect fitness payback that comes from that individual's act helping to build in a higher degree of altruism into their social group dynamics thus helping to lower transactional costs perhaps. Cheers, -Chris D From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of chris peck Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 4:04 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong Hi Chris d m The papers Ive been reading regard horizontal genetic transfer as a mechanism by which the machinery of translation, transcription and replication evolved. As cellular organisms became more complex this mechanism gives way to vertical genetic transfer which then dominates evolution. They call this hypothetical period the Darwinain Transition. At this point selection at a genetic level takes over. I cant vouch for the ideas plausibility. I think that selection at a genetic level is enough to account for altruism. Hamilton's law predicts that behaviors will be undertaken so long as the benefit multiplied by the degree of genetic relatedness outweighs the cost. This equation gets healthy support from the study of bees, wasps and ants etc where the unusual 2/3 relatedness between female siblings gives rise to unisially co-operative behaviour and between sisters. All the best --- Original Message --- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net Sent: 13 August 2013 4:56 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong On 8/12/2013 9:41 AM, Chris de Morsella wrote: What co-evolutionary traits have been shown to have occurred in dogs and cattle because of their association with humans (so which are therefore part of the equation)? Dogs are just wolves that, thru (un)natural
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Chris You assume the dog acted with a premeditated anticipation of a reward. No I really don't. I was just being a little light hearted in that paragraph. There is a disjunct between the reasons the dog does something and the effect the behavior has on genes. The dog may just love children, it might be acting out of genuine concern and without a morsel of thought for its own well being. But it only can be doing that if that kind of behavior aids the propagation of the traits which underpin it. The point was that from the gene's pov that kind of behavior might well be reciprocal. Dogs get big benefits when they do good things. all the best Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 11:12:56 +1000 From: li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 12:01:52PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: The central dogma of molecular biology deals with the detailed residue-by-residue transfer of sequential information. Yes, but we're not talking about molecular biology, we're talking about Evolution and it has a different central dogma. It states that such information cannot be transferred back from protein to either protein or nucleic acid. I know of no example of a change in a protein making a systematic repeatable change (as opposed to a random mutation) in the sequence of bases in DNA that are passed onto the next generation. Epigenetic information is expressed by the presence or absence of methylation of the bases, not the sequence. Not all evolutionary processes have the central dogma So what? As I said before, Darwin knew nothing about DNA or proteins or epigenetic changes and he didn't need to; he knew nothing about the details he only knew that there were hereditary factors of some sort that were passed from one generation to the next, and because no process is perfect he knew that there would sometimes be changes in that information, and he knew that some of those factors would reproduce faster than others, and he knew that the thing that would determine the winning factors from the losing factors is natural selection. Sure, I'm not arguing that epigenetic, prebiotic or cultural evolution shouldn't be called Darwinian. But in that case, Lamarkian evolution is also Darwinian, and sometimes people want to draw that distinction, so the adjective Darwinian become a bit ill-defined and meaningless. Any process satisfying Lewontin's 3 criteria I would call evolution. If any of the criteria are not satisfied, I would use a word like process, such as irreversible process, or whatever. What it means is that lessons learnt by the body (ie protein) cannot be transferred back to the genome (ie DNA). It is the antithesis to Lamarkianism. Epigenetic changes involve changes of the genome by the body Epigenetic changes do not change the sequence of bases in DNA, and more important I see no evidence that the body has learned any lessons. I see no Epigenetic changes show that there is more to hereditary information than base pair sequence. evidence that epigenetic changes are more likely to happen in the direction of greater adaptability rather than the reverse. All I see is the environment causing random changes in hereditary factors that, like all changes, are more likely to be harmful than helpful. How significant epigenesis is to evolution is another matter, of course. Well Darwinian Evolution was what we are talking about! Well, actually, what we started talking about was prebiotic evolution, the possibility of evolving an oprimised standard genetic code, to be precise. At most all epigenesis does is provide a new source of variation for Darwinian Natural Selection to work on; and if those changes don't persist through many generations then epigenesis can't even do that. Obviously, there is no equivalent central dogma in cultural evolution. The central dogma of Evolution, both biological and cultural, has nothing to do with DNA or proteins or epigenesis. The central dogma of Evolution is: 1) Heredity factors exist. 2) The process that transfers those factors is very reliable but is not perfect and so sometimes they change. 3) Because there are more ways to be wrong than to be right most (but not all) of those changes are harmful. 4) Some of those changed heredity factors will reproduce faster than others and become dominant in a population. Provide one citable source where the author uses the term central dogma to describe the above (which is a somewhat poor paraphrase of Lewontin's 3 criteria of evolution). The discovery of epigenesis does not in any way challenge the central dogma of Evolution. Only if you redefine the term central
RE: Rambling on AI -- was: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
Hi Chris Increasingly code is the result of genetic algorithms being run over many generations of Darwinian selection -- is this programmed code? What human hand wrote it? At how many removes? In evolutionary computations the 'programmer' has control over the fitness function which ultimately guides the evolution of algorithms towards a highly specific goal. Moreover, outside of the IT lab, there is no competition for the algorithm to evolve against nor is there a genuine ecology supplying pressures against which selection can happen. Why? Because that is what the fitness function provides. It is wrong to suppose that genetic algorithms evolve without human input. The human input is as essential to the evolutionary technique as natural selection is to evolution proper. Without it nothing evolves at all. We might therefore find lurking in the some dark nether region of the inter web a program secretly plotting how to get from John o Groats to Lands End by the quickest route. But I don't think we'ld find much more than that. :) All the best. Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 19:59:46 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Rambling on AI -- was: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? On 8/17/2013 4:53 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote: We must not limit the rise of AI to any single geo-located system and ignore just how fertile of an ecosystem the global networked world of machines and connected devices provides for a nimble highly virtualized AI that exist in no place at any given time, but has neurons in millions (possibly billions) of devices everywhere on earth... an AI that cannot be shut down without shutting down literally everything that is so deeply penetrated and embedded in all our systems that it becomes impossible to extricate. I am speculating of course and have no evidence that this is indeed occurring, but am presenting it as a potential architecture of awareness. I agree that such and AI is possible, but I think it is extremely unlikely for the same reason it is unlikely that an animal with human-like intelligence could evolve - that niche is taken. Your scenarios contemplate an AI that evolves somehow in secret and then spring upon us fully developed. But the evolving AI would show it's hand *before* it became superhumanly clever at hiding. 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
The sad fact is that without Hitler, the West would still be a colonial power committing human rights abuses on a unimaginable scale. I suppose we should expect multiverse theorists to present as fact counterfactual histories which can't be falsified. Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 16:49:59 -0700 From: pier...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Self-contradictory. You've got to follow your own theories to their logical conclusions. *Which* Western/third world would have been better off if WW3 hadn't happened? Since everything happens in some branch of the multiverse, surely there are innumerable branches in which the world is better off for not having undergone the horrors of WW3. Or are you saying that, if you summed human happiness in the branches of the hypothetical branch of the multiverse in which WW3 didn't happen, and compared it to the sum of human happiness in the branches in which it did, it would be higher in the ones in which it didn't? Put that way, it becomes a rather absurd claim wouldn't you say? And dubious - since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches has to make up for the staggering, unimaginable misery of the holocaust, the Russian front, Hiroshima etc etc before getting ahead at all, and secondly because this is all based on the theory that Nazism not being debunked (It was exterminated) would have led to an incorporation of fascist ideology into the mainstream of global social organization, an extremely debatable proposition. Extremism is fostered by economic desperation. If the world had had time to fully recover from the depression, notions of invading the world would have looked a lot less attractive to the fat, comfortable citizens of an affluent western Europe, and Nazism may well have died a quiet death without the need for apocalypse. But of course I won't argue that's what *would* have happened, because making predictions about the consequences of any single event or change in world history is impossible. If you'd like to disagree, please tell us all what the consequences of the Arab uprisings will be in twenty years' time. We'll check back in then and see how well you performed. On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:56:57 AM UTC+10, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:Roger may start a discussion on politics and presents some very narrow minded views, but I can present a different view that may be totally politically incorect but is i.m.o. the right view. Not only is the 3rd World better off with WWII having happened, the Western World is also better off. Without WWII, Nazism would not have been debunked and we would gradually have evolved to become less free societies. Ideas that are totally politically incorrect like euthanizing old and handicap people to save health care costs would have been business as usual. The fundamental mistake Roger makes is to think that the core moral values we have today are universal and that you can look back many decades and then condemn e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood for having supported the Nazis back then. In the end, Roger's brain is just executing a prgram, whatever is against his moral values is encoded in his brain and that information did not come out of thin air. Had history run a different course (and history has run a different course in different sectors of the multiverse), Roger would have supported Nazi policies himself. In fact we can be sure that such a Nazi version of Roger exsts in the multiverse, because all possible programs exists. Saibal Citeren spudb...@aol.com: I do not see why Roger, needs, politics in this forum, but, so be it. Smitra expresses a view that decides the US, has to be ruined for the evil it has conspired against the wonderful, and innocent, people's of the 3rd world. I am guessing that when the ISI strikes India, using enhanced fission devices, he will be content that they detonate it only on legitimate military targets? Enjoy. -Original Message- From: smitra smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list everyth...@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 8:13 am Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Also I believe that 9/11 was a good thing, albeit it would have been etter if Bin Laden had focusses only on legitimate military targets ike the White House, the US Congress, the Senate and the Pentagon. iteren Roger Clough rcl...@verizon.net: The Nazi history of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jk4a3Kk6-Y Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. Of course we regard our norms and values as correct. They are our norms and values. However, history shows a steady flow towards more humane rather than less humane norms and values. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. Quite. we have gradually moved away from that kind of obscenity rather than towards it. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society No, by your very own example we are more sensitive to it. Like you point out, we have gradually moved to the point where barbarities like drawing and quartering are less acceptable. We now regard kicking a dog as barbaric let alone public execution. So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a completely different character. By your own argument so far this is a non-sequitur. Moreover, you have failed to show how Hitler could ever have come to power in the absence of economic desperation. You haven't even argued for it. You ought to be demonstrating a gentle creep into barbarity but you demonstrate the opposite. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other people who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. We gradually moved from societies in which slavery was an accepted norm to ones which regard it as barbaric. This happened without cataclysm. This amounts to a falsifying example. This may help: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/principle_of_falsification.html You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. This has been regarded as immoral for a very long time. You should read up on this gentleman. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ But, in any case, yes, our descendants will view some of our norms and values as troubling. Just as we do our ancestors. This is because there is a gentle creep away from barbarity rather than towards it. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. If they were stupid. Intelligent judges from the future would recognize that by the 21st century the gradual reduction in barbarity over millenia had reached a point where poverty, womens rights, animal rights, gay rights, could come to the forefront of the moral agenda. Its not the case that poverty was not an issue before, but that prior to the past 50 years or so there have been more pressing and blood thirsty barbarities to quell. All the best. Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:41:43 +0200 From: smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Hi Brent But I don't think this is just a moral evolution. I think it is driven by technology. As societies become richer they become less competitive and insular and more compassionate and open. I agree. I think trade imparticularly creates a symbiotic relationship between people which gets internalized. Pragmatically it makes sense to see people as friend rather than foe if we want them to buy our stuff and this pragmatism then gets solidified in our moral sentiment. I think there are other factors too. I read somewhere that the development and popularity of the novel as a literary form encouraged people to see the world through others' eyes and this had some effect on empathy. There's probably a plethora of factors that lead to this trend, but I think trade is a major one. f global warming or running out of oil or some other widespread diminution of ease and wealth occurs there will likely be a corresponding diminution in empathy and compassion. I agree. All the best From: cdemorse...@yahoo.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 17:52:42 -0700 More hateful stereotyping of a diverse group numbering over a billion human beings by our very own fascist troll From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:02 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.netOn 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
Hi Craig am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view. But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events. The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. All the best. Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 19:13:57 -0700 From: whatsons...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:33:06 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random. Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional). If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet even though they know it is random. But that's only because of the impact that the random or determined condition has on our free participation. We have anxiety because a particular condition threatens to constrain our free will or cause unpleasant sensations. They are inextricably linked. A sensation can only be so unpleasant if we retain the power to escape it voluntarily. It is only when we we think that a situation will be unpleasant and that we will not be able to avoid it that anxiety is caused. We can't say whether we would have anxiety in a deterministic universe unless we knew for sure that we had been in a deterministic universe at at some point, but logically, it would not make sense for any such thing as anxiety to arise in a universe of involuntary spectators. What would be the justification of such an emotion? Anxiety makes sense if you have free will. If anything anxiety is caused by the ability to imagine the loss of the effectiveness of your free will. I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism. Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly. In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'. You know that you have wants, and you conclude from this that your brain cannot function deterministically or randomly. You make this claim repeatedly and without justification. My brain has nothing to do with it. I am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism. In the deterministic universe, you would be enslave no matter what, so what difference would it make whether your constraint is internally programmatic or externally modified? I don't think being a slave to brain processes is considered to be real slavery by most people. You are free to differ in your definition. Why not? What exactly is the difference whether your enslavement is internally based or externally based? Some questions for determinist thinkers: Can we effectively doubt that we have free will? I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or that they are neither random nor determined It sounds like you are agreeing with me? On this point, yes; but I'm using the common, legal or compatibilist definition of free will, not yours. Ok Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very
RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
Hi Chris / Stathis I probably shouldn't have used the word adaptive. I think Craig is arguing : 1) whatever 'feels'/psychological states emerge from the universe must be compatible with its fundamental nature. 2) Anxiety implies that I really could avoid some feared event. 3) But que sera sera in a determined universe. what will be will be. I can't avoid my fate. consequently, anxiety can not emerge within a determined universe because of 2 and 1. Initially I took issue with 2) in the following way: I felt that uncertainty about a unavoidable fate would provide space for anxiety to emerge. But the more I thought about Craig's position the less tenable I thought this was. I think his position is very compelling (if I understand it). If nothing has ever avoided a fate how has the sense that this can be achieved emerged? What is it about the universe that allows for this delusion? What is it built out of? Anyway the questions flooded in. So i thought what if 'anxiety' doesn't imply the ability to avoid a fate. Maybe its just an epiphenomenal 'feel' that floats above psychological uncertainty and isn't really susceptible to further analysis. That didn't seem to conflict with a determined universe readily. Chris, as for whether any of this is plausible, probable etc. I'm afraid I wouldn't even begin to know how to assess that. And to be honest I'm not even sure whether Craig would accept my paraphrase of his argument. All the best. From: stath...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 15:01:35 +1000 Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 22 August 2013 13:20, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Craig am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view. That's no more true for a determined universe than it is for a non-determined universe. But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events. The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. All the best. If it were possible to have the same behaviour without consciousness then consciousness would not have evolved - there would be no adaptive value to it. That is one reason why I think consciousness must be a necessary side-effect of intelligent behaviour, at least in organic machines such as we are. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
never developed in the mammalian branch in the first place. The emotional life of very many animals, including the human animal, is critical to their survival in fact.Can something so critical be an accidental epiphenomena emerging out of the inefficiency of the program? Besides wouldn’t the program evolve to be as efficient as it could; doesn’t the conservation of energy apply to the deterministic universe itself or does it get to play by different rules?By the way I enjoy how you argue your position, very cogent and well laid out; it’s just that I feel that proposing that the poetry and depth of the experience of feeling that all of us to one degree or another experience, could be an accidental co-phenomena; a kind of side show that is a distracting superficial phenomena of no bearing or consequence to the underlying preordained script is not supported by the evidence that nature places a lot of energy and attention on developing and evolving precisely those phenomena in a lot of life forms we can study.Thanks for the interesting thread,Chris From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of chris peck Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:20 PM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade Hi Craig am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view. But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events. The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. All the best.Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 19:13:57 -0700 From: whats...@gmail.com To: everyth...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:33:06 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random. Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional). If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet even though they know it is random. But that's only because of the impact that the random or determined condition has on our free participation. We have anxiety because a particular condition threatens to constrain our free will or cause unpleasant sensations. They are inextricably linked. A sensation can only be so unpleasant if we retain the power to escape it voluntarily. It is only when we we think that a situation will be unpleasant and that we will not be able to avoid it that anxiety is caused. We can't say whether we would have anxiety in a deterministic universe unless we knew for sure that we had been in a deterministic universe at at some point, but logically, it would not make sense for any such thing as anxiety to arise in a universe of involuntary spectators. What would be the justification of such an emotion? Anxiety makes sense if you have free will. If anything anxiety is caused by the ability to imagine the loss of the effectiveness of your free will. I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism. Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly. In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'. You know that you have wants, and you conclude from this that your brain cannot function deterministically or randomly. You make this claim repeatedly and without justification. My brain has nothing to do with it. I am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire
