Re: Do today's philosophers even think about the existence of God anymore?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thursday, October 9, 2014, Samiya Illias  wrote:

> What is your position on teleology? Do you think that there is a cause or
> purpose for everything?
> Also, what do you think of this:
> http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/08/teleology-purpose-built-universe.html
>
>

Does God's existence have a purpose, set by a supergod? If you're happy
with the idea of God not being created for a purpose, then why insist that
the universe is created for a purpose, and why insist that humans are
created for a purpose rather than (as presumably is the case with
God) inventing their own purpose?

--Stathis Papaioannou


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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RE: UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

LOL and L

Always just fifty years away

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 3:43 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

 

I thought main problem with fusion is no-one can get it to work?

But yeah, fusion - if only we had a reactor sitting somewhere nearby churning 
out energy that we could easily tap...

 

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Re: Do today's philosophers even think about the existence of God anymore?

[Samiya Illias]

What is your position on teleology? Do you think that there is a cause or
purpose for everything?
Also, what do you think of this:
http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/08/teleology-purpose-built-universe.html


Samiya

On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 7:30 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 10/8/2014 5:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 10/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>>  On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>  On 10/7/2014 1:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 06 Oct 2014, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>> Here's an interesting interview of a philosopher who is interested in the
>> question of whether God exists.  The interesting thing about it, for this
>> list, is that "God" is implicitly the god of theism, and is not "one's
>> reason for existence" or "the unprovable truths of arithmetic".
>>
>>
>> How do you know that? How could you know that.
>>
>>
>> I read the interview.  For example
>>
>> *D.G.: I’m not a believer, so I’m not in a position to say. First of all,
>> it’s worth noting that some of the biggest empirical challenges don’t come
>> from science but from common features of life. Perhaps the hardest case for
>> believers is the Problem of Evil: The question of how a benevolent God
>> could allow the existence of evil in the world, both natural evils like
>> devastating earthquakes and human evils like the Holocaust, has always been
>> a great challenge to faith in God. There is, of course, a long history of
>> responses to that problem that goes back to Job. While nonbelievers (like
>> me) consider this a major problem, believers have, for the most part,
>> figured out how to accommodate themselves to it.*
>>
>> It's obvious that Garber is talking about the god of theism.  If he were
>> referring to some abstract principle or set of unprovable truths there
>> would be no "problem of evil" for that god.
>>
>>
>>
>>  On the contrary, computationalism will relate qualia like pain and evil
>> related things with what numbers can endure in a fist person perspective
>> yet understand that this enduring is ineffable and hard to justify and be
>> confronted with that very problem.
>>
>>
>>  But under computationlism it's not a problem.  The is no presumption
>> that a computable world is morally good by human standards.
>>
>
>  Under computationalism, all possible worlds and all possible observers
> exist and there's nothing God can do about it. God can no more make certain
> observers or observations not exist than make 2 + 2 = 3. However, a
> benevolent theistic god under computationalism (with access to unlimited
> computing resources) could nonetheless "save" beings who existed in other
> worlds by continuing the computation of their minds.
>
>
> You say "could" as though he had a choice, meaning He's not part of the
> computable world and is not one of the "all possible observers".  Seems to
> me that he will have to both save everyone and also torture everyone in
> hell.
>
> Brent
>
> --
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Re: Do today's philosophers even think about the existence of God anymore?

[meekerdb]

On 10/8/2014 5:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 10/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/7/2014 1:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Oct 2014, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:


Here's an interesting interview of a philosopher who is interested in the
question of whether God exists.  The interesting thing about it, for this 
list,
is that "God" is implicitly the god of theism, and is not "one's reason for
existence" or "the unprovable truths of arithmetic".


How do you know that? How could you know that. 


I read the interview.  For example

/D.G.: I’m not a believer, so I’m not in a position to say. First of all, 
it’s
worth noting that some of the biggest empirical challenges don’t come from 
science
but from common features of life. Perhaps the hardest case for believers is 
the
Problem of Evil: The question of how a benevolent God could allow the 
existence of
evil in the world, both natural evils like devastating earthquakes and 
human evils
like the Holocaust, has always been a great challenge to faith in God. 
There is,
of course, a long history of responses to that problem that goes back to 
Job.
While nonbelievers (like me) consider this a major problem, believers have, 
for
the most part, figured out how to accommodate themselves to it./

It's obvious that Garber is talking about the god of theism.  If he were 
referring
to some abstract principle or set of unprovable truths there would be no 
"problem
of evil" for that god.



On the contrary, computationalism will relate qualia like pain and evil 
related
things with what numbers can endure in a fist person perspective yet 
understand
that this enduring is ineffable and hard to justify and be confronted with 
that
very problem.


But under computationlism it's not a problem. The is no presumption that a
computable world is morally good by human standards.


Under computationalism, all possible worlds and all possible observers exist and there's 
nothing God can do about it. God can no more make certain observers or observations not 
exist than make 2 + 2 = 3. However, a benevolent theistic god under computationalism 
(with access to unlimited computing resources) could nonetheless "save" beings who 
existed in other worlds by continuing the computation of their minds.


You say "could" as though he had a choice, meaning He's not part of the computable world 
and is not one of the "all possible observers".  Seems to me that he will have to both 
save everyone and also torture everyone in hell.


Brent

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Re: Do today's philosophers even think about the existence of God anymore?

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 10/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
>  On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:
>
>  On 10/7/2014 1:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 06 Oct 2014, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:
>
> Here's an interesting interview of a philosopher who is interested in the
> question of whether God exists.  The interesting thing about it, for this
> list, is that "God" is implicitly the god of theism, and is not "one's
> reason for existence" or "the unprovable truths of arithmetic".
>
>
> How do you know that? How could you know that.
>
>
> I read the interview.  For example
>
> *D.G.: I’m not a believer, so I’m not in a position to say. First of all,
> it’s worth noting that some of the biggest empirical challenges don’t come
> from science but from common features of life. Perhaps the hardest case for
> believers is the Problem of Evil: The question of how a benevolent God
> could allow the existence of evil in the world, both natural evils like
> devastating earthquakes and human evils like the Holocaust, has always been
> a great challenge to faith in God. There is, of course, a long history of
> responses to that problem that goes back to Job. While nonbelievers (like
> me) consider this a major problem, believers have, for the most part,
> figured out how to accommodate themselves to it.*
>
> It's obvious that Garber is talking about the god of theism.  If he were
> referring to some abstract principle or set of unprovable truths there
> would be no "problem of evil" for that god.
>
>
>
>  On the contrary, computationalism will relate qualia like pain and evil
> related things with what numbers can endure in a fist person perspective
> yet understand that this enduring is ineffable and hard to justify and be
> confronted with that very problem.
>
>
> But under computationlism it's not a problem.  The is no presumption that
> a computable world is morally good by human standards.
>

Under computationalism, all possible worlds and all possible observers
exist and there's nothing God can do about it. God can no more make certain
observers or observations not exist than make 2 + 2 = 3. However, a
benevolent theistic god under computationalism (with access to unlimited
computing resources) could nonetheless "save" beings who existed in other
worlds by continuing the computation of their minds.

Jason

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Re: UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

  From: meekerdb 
   
 So they have a design which doesn't produce any net energy, but if it's just 
scaled up it'll be a winner?
 
 Brent
Essentially yes, it has NOT been built. What I found interesting was their 
claim that they could do away with all those bulky massively expensive 
superconducting magnetic coils that characterize current reactor designs -- 
including ITER. Quoting from the article "a spheromak, generates the majority 
of [its] magnetic fields by driving electrical currents into the plasma itself."

 
 On 10/8/2014 3:19 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
  


  Would like to see how this particular technology develops (that is if there 
are no unreported or unforeseen problems roadblocking it) The explanation made 
sense to me, but then I do not know enough about this field to have a firm 
opinion.  Hope it pans out, because the world is racing towards the energy 
cliff at breakneck speed  
  UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal
   
|     |
|     ||     |     |     |     |     |
|   UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal Fusion energy almost 
sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived 
radioactive waste, a  nearly unlimited fuel supply.|
| 
  |
|  View on phys.org  |  Preview by Yahoo  |
| 
  |
|     |

  
  
  Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas 
emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.
  Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics 
haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform 
systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. University of 
Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a 
fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power 
plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical 
output. The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last 
spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy 
Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia. "Right now, this 
design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any 
current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and 
astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics. The UW's reactor, called the 
dynomak, started as a class project taught by Jarboe two years ago. After the 
class ended, Jarboe and doctoral student Derek Sutherland – who previously 
worked on a reactor design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – 
continued to develop and refine the concept. The design builds on existing 
technology and creates a magnetic field within a closed space to hold plasma in 
place long enough for fusion to occur, allowing the hot plasma to react and 
burn. The reactor itself would be largely self-sustaining, meaning it would 
continuously heat the plasma to maintain thermonuclear conditions. Heat 
generated from the reactor would heat up a  coolant that is used to spin a 
turbine and generate electricity, similar to how a typical power reactor works. 
"This is a much more elegant solution because the medium in which you generate 
fusion is the medium in which you're also driving all the current required to 
confine it," Sutherland said. There are several ways to create a magnetic 
field, which is crucial to keeping a fusion reactor going. The UW's design is 
known as a spheromak, meaning it generates the majority of magnetic fields by 
driving electrical currents into the plasma itself. This reduces the amount of 
required materials and actually allows researchers to shrink the overall size 
of the reactor. Other designs, such as the experimental fusion reactor project 
that's currently being built in France – called Iter – have to be much larger 
than the UW's because they rely on superconducting coils that circle around the 
outside of the device to provide a similar magnetic field. When compared with 
the fusion reactor concept in France, the UW's is much less expensive – roughly 
one-tenth the cost of Iter – while producing five  times the amount of energy. 
The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant 
using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant. They 
used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which includes all costs, 
particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power plant producing 1 
gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a  coal 
plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis. 
"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the 
commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very 
exciting." Right now, the UW's concept is about one-tenth the size and power 
output of a final product, which is still years away. The researchers have 
succ

Re: UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

[meekerdb]

So they have a design which doesn't produce any net energy, but if it's just scaled up 
it'll be a winner?


Brent

On 10/8/2014 3:19 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
Would like to see how this particular technology develops (that is if there are no 
unreported or unforeseen problems roadblocking it) The explanation made sense to me, but 
then I do not know enough about this field to have a firm opinion.

Hope it pans out, because the world is racing towards the energy cliff at 
breakneck speed

UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal 



image 





UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal 

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no 
long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.


View on phys.org 


Preview by Yahoo



Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no 
long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.
Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy 
 is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion 
power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as 
coal and natural gas.
University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for 
a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, 
would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.
The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will 
present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy 
Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.
"Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power 
of any current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and 
astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.
The UW's reactor, called the dynomak, started as a class project taught by Jarboe two 
years ago. After the class ended, Jarboe and doctoral student Derek Sutherland – who 
previously worked on a reactor design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – 
continued to develop and refine the concept.
The design builds on existing technology and creates a magnetic field 
 within a closed space to hold plasma in place 
long enough for fusion to occur, allowing the hot plasma to react and burn. The reactor 
itself would be largely self-sustaining, meaning it would continuously heat the plasma 
to maintain thermonuclear conditions. Heat generated from the reactor would heat up a 
coolant that is used to spin a turbine and generate electricity, similar to how a 
typical power reactor works.
"This is a much more elegant solution because the medium in which you generate fusion is 
the medium in which you're also driving all the current required to confine it," 
Sutherland said.
There are several ways to create a magnetic field, which is crucial to keeping a fusion 
reactor going. The UW's design is known as a spheromak, meaning it generates the 
majority of magnetic fields by driving electrical currents into the plasma itself. This 
reduces the amount of required materials and actually allows researchers to shrink the 
overall size of the reactor.
Other designs, such as the experimental fusion reactor project that's currently being 
built in France – called Iter – have to be much larger than the UW's because they rely 
on superconducting coils that circle around the outside of the device to provide a 
similar magnetic field.When compared with the fusion reactor concept in France, the UW's 
is much less expensive – roughly one-tenth the cost of Iter – while producing five times 
the amount of energy.
The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor 
 power plant using their design and compared that 
with building a coal power plant. They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," 
which includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power plant 
producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal 
plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.
"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the commercial 
reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very exciting."
Right now, the UW's concept is about one-tenth the size and power output of a final 
product, which is still years away. The researchers have successfully tested the 
prototype's ability to sustain a plasma efficiently, and

Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience

[Quentin Anciaux]

Waouw,  the great John Clark got it all...  he knows everything in nature
is computable,  that computationalism is true... and the best,  he doesn't
need to prove it or provide an argument... it is so self evident. I wonder
why he didn't get the Nobel prize.
Le 8 oct. 2014 23:16, "John Clark"  a écrit :

> On Mon, Oct 6, 2014  Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> > the question is not if human can use nature's solution of an NP-hard (or
>> even a non computable analog function),
>>
>
> If nature can do it then there is no reason humans can't harness nature to
> do it for us, but there is ZERO evidence that nature can solve  NP complete
> problems (much less non computable problems!) in polynomial time.
>
>
>> > but if nature does
>>
>
>  The question isn't if human beings can devise problems that are
> NP-complete, we already know that they can, the question is: Does nature
> ever solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time? There is not one scarp of
> evidence that it does.
>
> > If our consciousness relies on this [...]
>>
>
> Then it's very odd that we can't find one bit of evidence that it's true
> and even odder that we're even worse at solving NP-complete problems than
> computers are.
>
>
>> > The point, I thought, was theoretical at the start.
>>
>
> You theory predicted that soap films could solve NP-complete problems.
> Experiment showed that it can not. Therefore the your theory is wrong. A
> good experiment ALWAYS outranks theory, any theory.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
> --
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>

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Re: UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

[LizR]

I thought main problem with fusion is no-one can get it to work?

But yeah, fusion - if only we had a reactor sitting somewhere nearby
churning out energy that we could easily tap...

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RE: UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

Would like to see how this particular technology develops (that is if there are 
no unreported or unforeseen problems roadblocking it) The explanation made 
sense to me, but then I do not know enough about this field to have a firm 
opinion. Hope it pans out, because the world is racing towards the energy cliff 
at breakneck speed 
UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

|   |
|   |  |   |   |   |   |   |
| UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coalFusion energy almost 
sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived 
radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply. |
|  |
| View on phys.org | Preview by Yahoo |
|  |
|   |



Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas 
emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.
Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics 
haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform 
systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.University of 
Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a 
fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power 
plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical 
output.The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last 
spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy 
Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia."Right now, this 
design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any 
current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and 
astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.The UW's reactor, called the 
dynomak, started as a class project taught by Jarboe two years ago. After the 
class ended, Jarboe and doctoral student Derek Sutherland – who previously 
worked on a reactor design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – 
continued to develop and refine the concept.The design builds on existing 
technology and creates a magnetic field within a closed space to hold plasma in 
place long enough for fusion to occur, allowing the hot plasma to react and 
burn. The reactor itself would be largely self-sustaining, meaning it would 
continuously heat the plasma to maintain thermonuclear conditions. Heat 
generated from the reactor would heat up a coolant that is used to spin a 
turbine and generate electricity, similar to how a typical power reactor 
works."This is a much more elegant solution because the medium in which you 
generate fusion is the medium in which you're also driving all the current 
required to confine it," Sutherland said.There are several ways to create a 
magnetic field, which is crucial to keeping a fusion reactor going. The UW's 
design is known as a spheromak, meaning it generates the majority of magnetic 
fields by driving electrical currents into the plasma itself. This reduces the 
amount of required materials and actually allows researchers to shrink the 
overall size of the reactor.Other designs, such as the experimental fusion 
reactor project that's currently being built in France – called Iter – have to 
be much larger than the UW's because they rely on superconducting coils that 
circle around the outside of the device to provide a similar magnetic field. 
When compared with the fusion reactor concept in France, the UW's is much less 
expensive – roughly one-tenth the cost of Iter – while producing five times the 
amount of energy.The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion 
reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal 
power plant. They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which 
includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power 
plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, 
while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to 
their analysis."If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded 
because the commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. 
"It's very exciting."Right now, the UW's concept is about one-tenth the size 
and power output of a final product, which is still years away. The researchers 
have successfully tested the prototype's ability to sustain a plasma 
efficiently, and as they further develop and expand the size of the device they 
can ramp up to higher-temperature plasma and get significant fusion power 
output.The team has filed patents on the reactor concept with the UW's Center 
for Commercialization and plans to continue developing and scaling up its 
prototypes.

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Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience

[John Clark]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2014  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> the question is not if human can use nature's solution of an NP-hard (or
> even a non computable analog function),
>

If nature can do it then there is no reason humans can't harness nature to
do it for us, but there is ZERO evidence that nature can solve  NP complete
problems (much less non computable problems!) in polynomial time.


> > but if nature does
>

 The question isn't if human beings can devise problems that are
NP-complete, we already know that they can, the question is: Does nature
ever solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time? There is not one scarp of
evidence that it does.

> If our consciousness relies on this [...]
>

Then it's very odd that we can't find one bit of evidence that it's true
and even odder that we're even worse at solving NP-complete problems than
computers are.


> > The point, I thought, was theoretical at the start.
>

You theory predicted that soap films could solve NP-complete problems.
Experiment showed that it can not. Therefore the your theory is wrong. A
good experiment ALWAYS outranks theory, any theory.

 John K Clark

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Nanoscopy

[Platonist Guitar Cowboy]

Breaking diffraction barrier in fluorescence microscopy:

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOVTS1lzRLQ

>From Guardian:

In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualise the pathways of
individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create
synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved
in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate;
they follow individual proteins in fertilised eggs as these divide into
embryos.

It was all but obvious that scientists should ever be able to study living
cells in the tiniest molecular detail. In 1873, the microscopist Ernst Abbe
stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of traditional
optical microscopy: it could never become better than 0.2 micrometres.

Eric Betzig, Stefan W Hell and William E Moerner are awarded the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry  2014 for
having bypassed this limit. Due to their achievements the optical
microscope can now peer into the nanoworld.

Two separate principles are rewarded. One enables the method *stimulated
emission depletion (STED) microscopy, *developed by Stefan Hell in 2000.
Two laser beams are utilised; one stimulates fluorescent molecules to glow,
another cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a nanometre-sized
volume. Scanning over the sample, nanometre for nanometre, yields an image
with a resolution better than Abbe’s stipulated limit.

Eric Betzig and William Moerner, working separately, laid the foundation
for the second method*, single-molecule microscopy*. The method relies upon
the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and
off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few
interspersed molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images yields a
dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel. In 2006 Eric Betzig utilised
this method for the first time.

Today, nanoscopy is used worldwide and new knowledge of greatest benefit to
mankind is produced on a daily basis.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2014/oct/08/nobel-prize-chemistry-2014-announcement-live

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Re: Do today's philosophers even think about the existence of God anymore?

[meekerdb]

On 10/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/7/2014 1:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Oct 2014, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:

Here's an interesting interview of a philosopher who is interested in the question of 
whether God exists.  The interesting thing about it, for this list, is that "God" is 
implicitly the god of theism, and is not "one's reason for existence" or "the 
unprovable truths of arithmetic".


How do you know that? How could you know that. 


I read the interview.  For example

/D.G.: I'm not a believer, so I'm not in a position to say. First of all, it's worth 
noting that some of the biggest empirical challenges don't come from science but from 
common features of life. Perhaps the hardest case for believers is the Problem of Evil: 
The question of how a benevolent God could allow the existence of evil in the world, 
both natural evils like devastating earthquakes and human evils like the Holocaust, has 
always been a great challenge to faith in God. There is, of course, a long history of 
responses to that problem that goes back to Job. While nonbelievers (like me) consider 
this a major problem, believers have, for the most part, figured out how to accommodate 
themselves to it./


It's obvious that Garber is talking about the god of theism.  If he were referring to 
some abstract principle or set of unprovable truths there would be no "problem of evil" 
for that god.



On the contrary, computationalism will relate qualia like pain and evil related things 
with what numbers can endure in a fist person perspective yet understand that this 
enduring is ineffable and hard to justify and be confronted with that very problem.


But under computationlism it's not a problem.  The is no presumption that a computable 
world is morally good by human standards.


Brent

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Re: I can tolerate anything except the outgroup

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Mine is the idea of making human existence better, materially. One of the primo 
ways, (not all) are the notions of uploading, conscious, (material or 
immaterial) improved medicine, improved energy, improved resources, etc. One 
way that humans will psychologically benefit, is with the conceptualization of 
a good?afterlife, be it technological, spiritual, or whatever.



-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Tue, Oct 7, 2014 10:44 am
Subject: I can tolerate anything except the outgroup

  I think this is a quite interesting 
read:http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/



It made me think of the everything list. We clearly have members of the 
conventional tribes (red, blue and gray), with all the predictable frictions.


But we have a fairly stable social group, at the same time. Do we have an 
outgroup that binds us all together? What's going on here?


Cheers
Telmo.

  
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Re: generalizations_of_islam - God Matter

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:53, LizR wrote:



But it's pejorative to refer to it as "god".  Nobody worships  
matter.  Physics textbooks don't have moral prescriptions derived  
from QED.  To call it "god" is to give into Bruno's desire to make  
all fundamental science "theology".



I think you have to distinguish Bruno's use of "theology" here from  
more conventional uses, which is something like "believing that X is  
fundamental is an act of faith."


OK. It is more believing in the primitive existence of X, and in the  
fact that X can justify conceptually the appearance of non-X type of  
things.



Physcaiism, not physics!, is the "religion" that X is the physical  
universe.


With computationalism X is the (sigma_1) arithmetical truth. It  
behaves a lot like the ONE of the neoplatonist pythagorean theologies,  
when intuited by the machine from inside.


The theology of the machine M is simply the set of all true  
proposition on M, including its (many) points of view.


It is beyond the science of the machine M, that is above what she can  
explain to other machines. Incompleteness makes this non empty, and  
distinguish the logic of the believer, the knower, the observer, etc.


Bruno





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



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Re: Do today's philosophers even think about the existence of God anymore?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/7/2014 1:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Oct 2014, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:

Here's an interesting interview of a philosopher who is interested  
in the question of whether God exists.  The interesting thing  
about it, for this list, is that "God" is implicitly the god of  
theism, and is not "one's reason for existence" or "the unprovable  
truths of arithmetic".


How do you know that? How could you know that.


I read the interview.  For example

D.G.: I'm not a believer, so I'm not in a position to say. First of  
all, it's worth noting that some of the biggest empirical challenges  
don't come from science but from common features of life. Perhaps  
the hardest case for believers is the Problem of Evil: The question  
of how a benevolent God could allow the existence of evil in the  
world, both natural evils like devastating earthquakes and human  
evils like the Holocaust, has always been a great challenge to faith  
in God. There is, of course, a long history of responses to that  
problem that goes back to Job. While nonbelievers (like me) consider  
this a major problem, believers have, for the most part, figured out  
how to accommodate themselves to it.


It's obvious that Garber is talking about the god of theism.  If he  
were referring to some abstract principle or set of unprovable  
truths there would be no "problem of evil" for that god.



On the contrary, computationalism will relate qualia like pain and  
evil related things with what numbers can endure in a fist person  
perspective yet understand that this enduring is ineffable and hard to  
justify and be confronted with that very problem.


There is a problem of evil in arithmetic. Is there a hell, for  
example, that is how long can we endure a pain? Does qualitative pains  
augment or diminish with the number of neurons, or the size of the  
relative numbers?


Well, with comp the math is there for the theology (including physics)  
of the ideally correct machine, or more exactly of the person  
canonically associated (by incompleteness) by the machine to itself in  
the arithmetical reality.


I am interested in all human theologies, because they can reflect the  
experience of machine successful in introspection, but in practice you  
can distinguish the genuine theologies, which encourage the personal  
research and the use of reason, and the non genuine theologies which  
invoke the talk of one machine and imposes some  literal  
interpretation to others and basically prevents, in one way or  
another, the personal research.


It is madness to separate science and religion. It creates the many  
pseudo-religions and the many pseudo-sciences.


Religion is the only goal: religare, relating and unifying the  
knowable. Looking for the "theo": the ultimate panorama, or a glimpse  
of it.
And science is the only tool, with the help of art, music, experiments  
and experiences.


Arithmetical truth is not God per se. It is only so in the sense that  
it appears for machines to behave like Plotinus describes the One, and  
corrected Aristotle through the Parmenides, and this in a coherent way  
with respect to assume that consciousness is invariant for some  
digital permutations.


Note that the existence of pain is easy to understand from Darwin  
theory, but the making of the qualia remains far from easy to  
understand. Even with having the Z* \ Z  logics describing the non  
communicable parts of the first person experiences. Pains might result  
from hidden self-lies or something.


Bruno




Brent


IF comp is true, and if Christianism is true, the meeting with St- 
Ptere and the "dogma" of the Church might well be among the  
unprovable truth (unprovable by you and similar) of arithmetic.
I doubt this, of course, but we just don't know. What is true and  
even provable, is that if we are consistent, in that case the  
discourse of the christians should be mute on this, and the  
Christians should just trust God for the advertising. So the  
behavior of some Christians might be inconsistent with arithmetic,  
but not necessarily the doctrine. But then the behavior of most  
institutionalized religion is already inconsistent or unsound with  
arithmetic, and the institutionalization is consistent like the  
provability of the false is consistent (but unsound) with  
arithmetic. That would mean that institutionalization *is* the  
theological trap that the machines already warn us against.


Bruno





Brent


 Original Message 



http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/can-wanting-to-believe-make-us-believers/


Gary Gutting: "This is the 12th and last in a series of interviews  
about religion that I am conducting for The Stone. The interviewee  
for this installment is Daniel Garber, a professor of philosophy  
at Princeton University, specializing in philosophy and science in  
the period of Galileo and Newton. In a week or two, I'll conclud

Re: [New post] Ten Questions for the Philosophy of Cosmology

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2014, at 22:47, meekerdb wrote:

What Bruno is pleased to call "theology" is in academia.  It's in  
the physics department.


Yes, all path go to Rome. No problem observing nature to get a clue.  
If comp is true it is in your head, and indeed it what the logic  
S4Grz1, Z1* and X1* describes in the head of the Löbian machines.


Sean Carroll still talk a little aristotelian accent, if I may say.  
But it looks like open minded.


Cosmology is not theology, per se. Only with the belief that cosmology  
answer or address the fundamental question, would it make it into a  
theology. I know christians cosmologist, and they might laugh at the  
idea of identifying "God" and "the physical universe", but some others  
can be pleased by the idea.


Cosmology typically does not handle the question on god or afterlife,  
or on the the soul and the nature of the person, but like Galilee,  
Einstein and Everett illustrates is that honest physics can't avoid  
the problem.


With comp we start from the other side, with the self-referential  
machine introspecting herself in Plato Heaven, actually only the  
Pythagorean part of it.


In theory the theo-logicians should met the physicists in the middle  
of the bridge soon, but in practice we can do one or two more  
millenaries of obscurantism in the fundamentals before.


Bruno





Brent


 Original Message 


New post on Sean Carroll


Ten Questions for the Philosophy of Cosmology
by Sean Carroll
Last week I spent an enjoyable few days in Tenerife, one of the  
Canary Islands, for a conference on the Philosophy of Cosmology. The  
slides for all the talks are now  
online;videos  
aren't up yet, but I understand they are forthcoming.




Stephen Hawking did not actually attend our meeting -- he was at the  
hotel for a different event. But he stopped by for an informal  
session on the arrow of time. Photo by Vishnya Maudlin.


It was a thought-provoking meeting, but one of my thoughts was: "We  
don't really have a well-defined field called Philosophy of  
Cosmology." At least, not yet. Talks were given by philosophers and  
by cosmologists; the philosophers generally gave good talks on the  
philosophy of physics, while some of the cosmologists gave solid-but- 
standard talks on cosmology. Some of the other cosmologists tried  
their hand at philosophy, and I thought those were generally less  
successful. Which is to be expected -- it's a sign that we need to  
do more work to set the foundations for this new subdiscipline.


A big part of defining an area of study is deciding on a set of  
questions that we all agree are worth thinking about. As a tiny step  
in that direction, here is my attempt to highlight ten questions --  
and various sub-questions -- that naturally fall under the rubric of  
Philosophy of Cosmology. They fall under other rubrics as well, of  
course, as well as featuring significant overlap with each other. So  
there's a certain amount of arbitrariness here -- suggestions for  
improvements are welcome.


Here we go:

In what sense, if any, is the universe fine-tuned? When can we say  
that physical parameters (cosmological constant, scale of  
electroweak symmetry breaking) or initial conditions are  
"unnatural"? What sets the appropriate measure with respect to which  
we judge naturalness of physical and cosmological parameters? Is  
there an explanation for cosmological coincidences such as the  
approximate equality between the density of matter and vacuum  
energy? Does inflation solve these problems, or exacerbate them?  
What conclusions should we draw from the existence of fine-tuning?
How is the arrow of time related to the special state of the early  
universe? What is the best way to formulate the past hypothesis (the  
early universe was in a low entropy state) and the statistical  
postulate (uniform distribution within macrostates)? Can the early  
state be explained as a generic feature of dynamical processes, or  
is it associated with a specific quantum state of the universe, or  
should it be understood as a separate law of nature? In what way, if  
any, does the special early state help explain the temporal  
asymmetries of memory, causality, and quantum measurement?
What is the proper role of the anthropic principle? Can anthropic  
reasoning be used to make reliable predictions? How do we define the  
appropriate reference class of observers? Given such a class, is  
there any reason to think of ourselves as "typical" within it? Does  
the prediction of freak observers (Boltzmann Brains) count as  
evidence against a cosmological scenario?
What part should unobservable realms play in cosmological models?  
Does cosmic evolution naturally generate pocket universes, baby  
universes, or many branches of the wave function? Are other  
"universes" part of science if they can never be observed? How do we  
evaluate such models, and does the 

Re: I can tolerate anything except the outgroup

[Platonist Guitar Cowboy]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

> I think this is a quite interesting read:
>
> http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
>
> It made me think of the everything list. We clearly have members of the
> conventional tribes (red, blue and gray), with all the predictable
> frictions.
>

There are thousands of social, psychological models that group people into
categories. The difference between quality and mush here, is that I can see
where an author is going ("what kind of people/world/proposition does this
suggest; how would that look like with varying degrees of
truth/implementation: relaxed to radical"), given that I put on his red,
blue, grey glasses or whatever.

A model has to refer to something. And even then, even when we do our best,
I feel Gödel's incompleteness is such a double edged sword, it will devour
(thankfully), any set of categories in some theory about "all kinds of
people".

At the base of things, I see therefore no in- or out-group, but people who
cling to their categories radically (doesn't matter if they are moderate or
freaks) and people who at least aspire to and can point to histories where
they minimize harm + share joy doing so, intuiting Gödel a bit.

The racism/religion bigot stuff are just tasteless, low examples of the
former. Of course there is truth to such assertions, nobody doubts this.
But where such reasoning leads, the self-fulfilling prophecy scenarios that
it sets whole cultures into (Terror as a global threat, when it was just
isolated gangsters years ago; the West brought in the modern weapons to
fertilize tensions centuries old, that had been suppressed by violent
dictatorship recently) is brainwashing ourselves into truth of increasingly
violent spirals of politics.

Cui bono, and what are proposed solutions?

Spud said "nothing", which is consistent with the rhetoric that since we
can't achieve cultural, economic advances, we should invest more into
military action. As if this will solve it.

Sure you have to put out fires, but without more freedom to search for
solutions + dumb media sensational feedback loop, that security gained by
temporary military measure will not provide the durable stability to move
forward towards common goals of higher living standard attainment etc., the
implementation of which should be at least as clear, convincing and
accurate as the weapons/people we send to fight. Otherwise, what are they
fighting for, other than downward infinite spiral?

So am I red, blue, grey, or pink or what now? PGC

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