Hi Craig and John, 1. Only living things evolve. 2. Because they have intelligence to see and choose. 3. Which is unplanned, but still seeks goals as all life does. 4. But not all life is equally intelligent. 5. But the seeking will change as the individual and his ambient possible goals change. 5. So evolution is a cosmic crap shoot with an variably intelligent player.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/30/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-29, 13:20:40 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Friday, September 28, 2012 11:56:07 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 Craig Weinberg wrote: > You are contradicting yourself. 1) Nothing special about biology 2) > Evolution is utterly helpless to create 'complex things' until it stumbled on > biology. Please explain. If you'd been paying attention you'd know that I already explained this on September 2, I repeat it now for your benefit: (Said John Clark after searching through every post he's made for the last month.) There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. You are just reasserting the same contradiction. It's not enough to assert that evolutionary designs (teleonomy) and rational designs (teleology) are different, I am asking you to explain how it is possible for them to be different, given your assumption that the latter evolved from the former. Again - you are stating that post biological processes are *very* different from everything else in the universe, and therefore very special, but then denying that there is any relevant difference between biology (the sole source of teleology and reason) and *everything else in the entire cosmos*. You haven't explained anything. I can think of a few reasons for natures poor design, the last one is the most important: Your ability to think and reason is nothing other than nature's poor design. I'm not the one saying that biological systems have qualities that inorganic systems cannot, you are. > I ask again. If biology is nothing special. WHY NOT SKIP THE BIOLOGY? I don't understand who you're asking this question to, nature? Yes. Chemistry exists and under the right conditions (among them the availability of liquid water, a energy source and lots and lots of time) a very simple reproductive organism can form; and once that happens Evolution can take over and produce far more interesting organisms. And if you don't like that fact then complain to the laws of physics not to me. But you are saying that the experiences of the more interesting organisms can easily be produced in the pre-evolutionary stupidity of chemistry or physics. > I am saying why not have cells produce crystal minerals in the ocean, like > coral, which use calcium and sodium ions to signal? Because Evolution never figured out how to do that, Evolution never figured out how to do a great many things, it never even figured out how to make a macroscopic wheel or an animal that could breathe fire. Then you admit that it would make more sense for human consciousness as you conceive of it to be hosted in a skull or knee cap rather than a brain. It just so happens that we showed up in brains. It just so happens that not one mutation of one species has ever successfully done that. Just random. > But we are evolution. I've noticed that when you get into a tight corner you tend to say things like X is Y as you did above that sound profound until you think about them for about .2 seconds. I haven't ever felt in a tight corner talking to you, because nothing that you are saying is new to me. Saying that we are evolution isn't supposed to be profound, it's an ordinary observation of fact. Maybe that's what you feel in the first .1 seconds before your prejudice and denial kick in. > Why go through this elaborate stage of speciation for a billion years. Because as I've said many times, for a billion years the elaborate stage of speciation was the only way complex things could get made. That is no longer true. At any time during those billion years, any other molecule could have developed some similar properties - yet it didn't, but still there is no difference between biological precursors and random debris in the universe. > the computers will happily allow themselves to be turned off, just like all > other machines. If the computer is smarter and more complex than you then your predictions about what the machine will and will not happily do are going to be terrible, just terrible. If you think predicting the weather is hard try predicting a mind thousands of times as powerful as your own. I work in a department of people who do nothing all day but prove that you are wrong. Even with layers upon layers of fault tolerance, redundancy, maintenance, updates, upgrades, and nightly reboots, all electronic devices under heavy use require constant human intervention to keep them running. If you think that is going to get better instead of worse, then I think it's out of religious faith rather than any rational or logical expectation. My prediction: The higher the technology, the more humans you will have standing around to prop it up 24/7. >A smart computer is no match for a stupid human with an axe. A thought like that makes you feel good doesn't it, pity its Bullshit. If it weren't true, you would tell me why rather than just tossing around baseless accusations. > I'm explaining specifically that there is no automatic connection between a > 'goal structure' and the invention of the subjective affect of 'joy'. You're not explaining anything you're just telling us what your intuition is saying and intuition isn't worth squat. No, that's what you are doing. You are the one who takes the unsupported leap from function to qualia, in spite of all evidence to the contrary (blindsight, anosognosia, synesthesia, brain lateralization, etc) And it's not your fault, nobody's intuition is any good in this area because there was no Evolutionary advantage in being good at self analysis and the philosophy of consciousness; hell our intuition is so screwy most people insist "free will" actually means something even after being shown it is logically inconsistent. So to have any hope of knowing what's going on we must abandon intuition and turn to reason. Reason is nothing but a kind of intuition. There can be logic without reason or intuition, and there can be intuition without logic without reason, but there cannot be reason without intuition. Einstein would have agreed with me: " ?he intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.? That quote is from this video, which I highly recommend: http://youtu.be/SbUHxC4wiWk How is your eyesight in your right eye? From what this psychiatrist says, it seems that your thinking is entirely dominated by your left brain, which is fantastic at screening out anything that contradicts the subject of it's focus and has no problem flatly denying everything else. Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/7WNb3JE3jDAJ. 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