Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
Hi, For reason of sharp time scheduling (I am in a teaching period), I will be shorter than usual. Craig, I still agree with most of your point below, but it contradicts the 19th century conception of mechanism, not the 20th century (post Turing Church ...) Mechanism. Bruno On 26 Feb 2013, at 17:29, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, February 26, 2013 6:30:59 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 20:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, February 25, 2013 1:26:49 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 17:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't define that, but we have a lot of example. Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then Bruno gave a slap to Craig would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not, and don't give you a slap. How do you know that we met or didn't meet? Maybe it was just a dream? Then it is true, or false, with respect to the dream. I was only illustrating a concept, known to de not definable, although approximable. There isn't necessarily a particular condition which is true or false in a dream. More often it just 'seems like' someone is your old college roommate in one sense, but maybe your brother also. Both truth and belief here are a posteriori to the sense experience of the dream itself, which is a gestalt and not meaningfully described by either-or expectations with respect to either belief or truth. In a dream, we don't know what we experience and we don't not-know what we experience. This is a truer representation of sense than public realism, which is disambiguated by thermodynamic irreversibility among the total collection of experiences. When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we might be wrong, that is not true. Not necessarily. There may be no objective truth quality. ? Sense pre-figures truth. Truth is a proportion or qualitative ratio of sense agreements against disagreements. We may be creating belief synthetically by our expectation. That is called wishful thinking. No, I'm talking about the idea that we have no beliefs at all until we question them. It may be an analytical abstraction that is a posteriori. We don't literally 'have a belief' that the sky is blue - we participate in a universe in which it seems that the sky is blue. It's a bit of sleight of hand to insert this presumption of belief where in fact the experience of the sky's color is not derived from any proposition or logical relation. If your criteria is wishful thinking, that might explain your question begging type of 'argument'. If you ask someone whether they believe that eating meat is immoral, they may not have had an opinion one way or another about it before you asked. There may not be an expectation that their spontaneously projected 'belief' reflects something that is 'true', but just an expression of what makes sense to them - what feels best in their mind or seems appropriate for their idea of their own character. I think it is better to try to see on what we agree, and build from that. Statements like eating meat is immoral are very complex high level statements not well suited for reasoning. If what I'm saying is true, eating meat is immoral is a very simple statement on the personal level, and ideal for pointing out the
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 26 Feb 2013, at 22:03, meekerdb wrote: On 2/26/2013 4:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. That raises questions like, Where were we when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Or more generally does the physics of every universe consistent with comp include quasi-classical physics? I think so. But to justify this *many* open problem, in arithmetic, needs to be solved. It seems that it is necessary for brains to exist and to have the ideas on which comp is based. Are we to regard this as just a fortunate anthropic accident? I am not sure. Difficult question. 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.
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 26 Feb 2013, at 23:51, meekerdb wrote: On 2/26/2013 1:46 PM, John Mikes wrote: Brent: forgive my weak 'brain': in the turmoil of BackAndForces on this list it faded what you (really?) mean by quasi classical physics I mean the world model of Newton and Maxwell plus a little randomness from QM: consisting of distinct objects in definite locations, not wave functions in infinite dimensional Hilbert space. brains Biological information processors found within skulls. and what 'ideas' is (your) 'comp' based on? ?? My comp? I think whatever we 'experience' is a (fortunate?) anthropic accident (incident?). I put (your) to comp, because I am not sure about Bruno's IF true - and you did not refer to it either. Dinos? We know so little about the past of this world - even about not-so ancient HUMAN past (Dravidians) so infulential into our present world. Or how the Simians straightened up their spine to become human? (I am in favor of the 'aequatic ape' dream). And others. Dinosaurs were just an example. I wondered what Bruno meant by saying we were here from the beginning. I am not sure having said that. I might have mean this in the arithmetical ontological sense perhaps. If you find the quote I can say more. Was he denying there was a pre-human past? Certainly not. The prehuman-past is quite plausible, but it is not something absolute. It is something relative to many computations, which exists out of time and space. I hope you are not talking about TOE derived at Dino-time, or later. (BTW: was a neuron of a dino bigger than that of today's mouse? With what size atoms? I asked this questions from many bio-people over the past 50 years - no answer so far. Some of them were certainly longer. Isaac Asimov once speculated that the size of dinosaurs was limited because the larger an animal the faster it can run, but dinosaurs had unmylenated neurons (like those in our brains) which are quite slow in transmitting signals. So when a dinosaur got very big he could run off a cliff right in front of him because the signal from his eyes to brain to feet would propagate more slowly than his forward motion. :-) Lol, Bruno Brent Maybe the Savants of this list can answer it?) JM On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 4:03 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/26/2013 4:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. That raises questions like, Where were we when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Or more generally does the physics of every universe consistent with comp include quasi-classical physics? It seems that it is necessary for brains to exist and to have the ideas on which comp is based. Are we to regard this as just a fortunate anthropic accident? 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- l...@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- l...@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. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2641/6133 - Release Date: 02/25/13 -- 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. 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
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
Sorry, I am superficialin my words. Your Comp referred to the idea your 'biological information processors in your skull' handles when you consider Bruno's comp. I missed that Asimov spot. He probably did not consider the neuronal input on 'running' vs. acknowledging the cliff. I participated for 2 decades in an enjoyable Wednesday Brownbag Lunch with the Drew Univ. ret. professors when one of us calculated out for us that it is physically impossible to play base-ball: the time to process visually the 'throw' is longer than the travelling time of the ball, so nobody can hit it. What led to 'deep' philosophical discussions.G My question about 'atomic size' was in consideration of the map of a neuron and the size avalable in the skull. Dinos did not parade brains of million times more than ours. Remember the Neandertals? with larger skulls and not necessarily more sophisticated brain-complexity than the Cro-Magnons? I always asked how much fat or other irrelevant matter was filling those bone boxes? Anthropologists do not like such questions. JM On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 5:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/26/2013 1:46 PM, John Mikes wrote: Brent: forgive my weak 'brain': in the turmoil of BackAndForces on this list it faded what you (really?) mean by quasi classical physics I mean the world model of Newton and Maxwell plus a little randomness from QM: consisting of distinct objects in definite locations, not wave functions in infinite dimensional Hilbert space. brains Biological information processors found within skulls. and what 'ideas' is (your) 'comp' based on? ?? My comp? I think whatever we 'experience' is a (fortunate?) anthropic accident (incident?). I put (your) to comp, because I am not sure about Bruno's IF true - and you did not refer to it either. Dinos? We know so little about the past of this world - even about not-so ancient HUMAN past (Dravidians) so infulential into our present world. Or how the Simians straightened up their spine to become human? (I am in favor of the 'aequatic ape' dream). And others. Dinosaurs were just an example. I wondered what Bruno meant by saying we were here from the beginning. Was he denying there was a pre-human past? I hope you are not talking about TOE derived at Dino-time, or later. (BTW: was a *neuron* of a dino bigger than that of today's mouse? With what size atoms? I asked this questions from many bio-people over the past 50 years - no answer so far. Some of them were certainly longer. Isaac Asimov once speculated that the size of dinosaurs was limited because the larger an animal the faster it can run, but dinosaurs had unmylenated neurons (like those in our brains) which are quite slow in transmitting signals. So when a dinosaur got very big he could run off a cliff right in front of him because the signal from his eyes to brain to feet would propagate more slowly than his forward motion. :-) Brent Maybe the Savants of this list can answer it?) JM On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 4:03 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/26/2013 4:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. That raises questions like, Where were we when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Or more generally does the physics of every universe consistent with comp include quasi-classical physics? It seems that it is necessary for brains to exist and to have the ideas on which comp is based. Are we to regard this as just a fortunate anthropic accident? 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?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. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2641/6133 - Release Date: 02/25/13 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 25 Feb 2013, at 20:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, February 25, 2013 1:26:49 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 17:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't define that, but we have a lot of example. Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then Bruno gave a slap to Craig would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not, and don't give you a slap. How do you know that we met or didn't meet? Maybe it was just a dream? Then it is true, or false, with respect to the dream. I was only illustrating a concept, known to de not definable, although approximable. When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we might be wrong, that is not true. Not necessarily. There may be no objective truth quality. ? We may be creating belief synthetically by our expectation. That is called wishful thinking. If your criteria is wishful thinking, that might explain your question begging type of 'argument'. If you ask someone whether they believe that eating meat is immoral, they may not have had an opinion one way or another about it before you asked. There may not be an expectation that their spontaneously projected 'belief' reflects something that is 'true', but just an expression of what makes sense to them - what feels best in their mind or seems appropriate for their idea of their own character. I think it is better to try to see on what we agree, and build from that. Statements like eating meat is immoral are very complex high level statements not well suited for reasoning. p is true means that it is the case that p, in the domain where p is supposed to be applied. If you believe that Obama is the president of the USA, it means that you believe that in our local geographico- historical situation, I don't think that one necessarily implies the other. A machine could easily associate the string Obama with president of the USA without having any knowledge of what that might mean. In a dream, you could believe that the USA is actually the Underground Satanic Association. in which case choose another example. Obama was not the main point here, neither the USA. it is a true fact, even if you can have a doubt, because you might find conceivable to wake up, perhaps younger, and that Ronald Reagan is the president of the US. A black pothead being a president of America... that sound like a dream, after all. But if you sleep too long, he won't be president anymore. Maybe you will wake up in 100 years when the historical revisionist party is in power and has everyone believing that the Obama presidency was a hoax...some kind of early information-media terrorism by the Chinese. Here you betray that you have a notion of truth. If not you would not refer to something like revisionism. We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often the term know for the beliefs based on quite common sharable assumption, like O has a successor, or the laws of addition and multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs. I don't think it has to be that simple. You are
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 25 Feb 2013, at 20:10, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/25/2013 1:26 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't define that, but we have a lot of example. Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then Bruno gave a slap to Craig would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not, and don't give you a slap. Dear Bruno and Craig, The slap is a physical action. How was it defined? Bruno, the physical world that we perceive our bodies to be immersed in, is acting in this example as the definer of truth. Is this your intention? It was just an illustration. See our preceding conversation for where the physical reality emerge from, once we assume computationalism. When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we might be wrong, that is not true. But there could exist a physical world different from the one we are in We are in infinities of computations, and the physical world emerges from that. that has an entity in it and there is a physical condition that validates the belief of that entity, no? That's correct, for the physical truth, which are epistemological in the comp setting. p is true means that it is the case that p, in the domain where p is supposed to be applied. Can the domain be defined recursively? No. For example, what if p is the proposition that p' is experienced and p' is the proposition that p'' is experienced and ... ? I cannot parse this. If you believe that Obama is the president of the USA, it means that you believe that in our local geographico-historical situation, it is a true fact, even if you can have a doubt, because you might find conceivable to wake up, perhaps younger, and that Ronald Reagan is the president of the US. A black pothead being a president of America... that sound like a dream, after all. A dream only for some... We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often the term know for the beliefs based on quite common sharable assumption, like O has a successor, or the laws of addition and multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs. I don't think it has to be that simple. You are only taking your own word for that limitation on your sense. We could have all kinds of intuitive influences beneath the threshold of our conscious awareness which are in fact true beyond mere belief. True is not opposed to belief. Sometimes some beliefs can be true. ISTM that a belief is contingent on the existence of something that contains a representation of that belief, OK. be it a human mind or a Platonic algorithm or whatever else may satisfy the role. No problem. But once a belief concerns a reality different from consciousness- here-and-now, I don't see how we can be sure that any statement is true, independently of their plausibility. We can be failed on all dreamable content, except one (actual consciousness). If infinitely many physical worlds exist then there could be a 'reality' for each and every belief. That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. I conjecture that most of those physical realities would be Boltzmann brains. We don't need them, arithmetic is enough. It contains the UD. Rather than assuming that belief is a logical stick model built up from nothing, It is not build up for nothing. It is an arithmetical relation between a number, and some universal numbers. No, Bruno. The fact that we can construct any number from the empty set I don't assume sets, at the base level. explicitly demands that we are building up things from nothing. You refer to one implementation of number in set theory. But we don't need that. This does not, IMHO, remove the 'reality' from them so long as the mutual agreement actions are possible. OK. I think it makes more sense to see it as a local fog which interferes with out larger grounding in the sense of eternity and totality. Knowledge does that. By linking belief with truth. But where does the 'truth'
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 7:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 20:10, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/25/2013 1:26 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't define that, but we have a lot of example. Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then Bruno gave a slap to Craig would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not, and don't give you a slap. Dear Bruno and Craig, The slap is a physical action. How was it defined? Bruno, the physical world that we perceive our bodies to be immersed in, is acting in this example as the definer of truth. Is this your intention? It was just an illustration. See our preceding conversation for where the physical reality emerge from, once we assume computationalism. When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we might be wrong, that is not true. But there could exist a physical world different from the one we are in We are in infinities of computations, and the physical world emerges from that. that has an entity in it and there is a physical condition that validates the belief of that entity, no? That's correct, for the physical truth, which are epistemological in the comp setting. p is true means that it is the case that p, in the domain where p is supposed to be applied. Can the domain be defined recursively? No. For example, what if p is the proposition that p' is experienced and p' is the proposition that p'' is experienced and ... ? I cannot parse this. If you believe that Obama is the president of the USA, it means that you believe that in our local geographico-historical situation, it is a true fact, even if you can have a doubt, because you might find conceivable to wake up, perhaps younger, and that Ronald Reagan is the president of the US. A black pothead being a president of America... that sound like a dream, after all. A dream only for some... We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often the term know for the beliefs based on quite common sharable assumption, like O has a successor, or the laws of addition and multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs. I don't think it has to be that simple. You are only taking your own word for that limitation on your sense. We could have all kinds of intuitive influences beneath the threshold of our conscious awareness which are in fact true beyond mere belief. True is not opposed to belief. Sometimes some beliefs can be true. ISTM that a belief is contingent on the existence of something that contains a representation of that belief, OK. be it a human mind or a Platonic algorithm or whatever else may satisfy the role. No problem. But once a belief concerns a reality different from consciousness-here-and-now, I don't see how we can be sure that any statement is true, independently of their plausibility. We can be failed on all dreamable content, except one (actual consciousness). If infinitely many physical worlds exist then there could be a 'reality' for each and every belief. That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. Bruno, I am pleased that you believe that With comp, the physical reality is unique because that is what I conclude in my paper Dreams of a Metaverse- Math///Mind -Matter Doubly Dualistic Loop-String Cosmology Richard I conjecture that most of those physical realities would be Boltzmann brains. We don't need them, arithmetic is enough. It contains the UD. Rather than assuming that belief is a logical stick model built up from nothing, It is not build up for nothing. It is an arithmetical relation between a number, and some universal numbers. No, Bruno. The fact that we can construct any number from the empty set I don't assume sets, at the base level. explicitly demands that we are building up things from nothing. You refer to one implementation of number in set theory. But we don't need that. This does not, IMHO, remove the 'reality' from them so long as the mutual agreement
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 26 Feb 2013, at 14:53, Richard Ruquist wrote: snip That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. Bruno, I am pleased that you believe that With comp, the physical reality is unique because that is what I conclude in my paper Dreams of a Metaverse- Math///Mind -Matter Doubly Dualistic Loop-String Cosmology Richard OK. But keep in mind that the physical reality, although unique and equivalent for all universal machine, might still be, and very plausibly is, a multiverse à-la Everett, or worst, a multi-multi- multiverse, when we assume mechanism. The physical laws are the same for all observers (indeed they are consequence of arithmetic self-reference), but this does not prevent many different histories and geographies. we are not unique. You have already such a sort of physical unicity with Everett, through the universal wave function, with many different terms on which our consciousness differentiate. Bruno I conjecture that most of those physical realities would be Boltzmann brains. We don't need them, arithmetic is enough. It contains the UD. Rather than assuming that belief is a logical stick model built up from nothing, It is not build up for nothing. It is an arithmetical relation between a number, and some universal numbers. No, Bruno. The fact that we can construct any number from the empty set I don't assume sets, at the base level. explicitly demands that we are building up things from nothing. You refer to one implementation of number in set theory. But we don't need that. This does not, IMHO, remove the 'reality' from them so long as the mutual agreement actions are possible. OK. I think it makes more sense to see it as a local fog which interferes with out larger grounding in the sense of eternity and totality. Knowledge does that. By linking belief with truth. But where does the 'truth' obtain from if not a physical instance? It comes from arithmetical truth. It need not be ontological primitive, as a physical world could be defined as merely that which at least 3 observers can agree upon as being real. Not with comp. Physics is more solid than that. Infinities of observers can be wrong. We say: Jim believed that Brussels was the capital of the USA, but now, he know better. We don't say Jim knew that Brussels was the capital of the USA, but now, he believed better. Careful that we don't define a word to have a property and then use the word to show the existence of that property. This is bootstrapping! This is not done here. This is something that can easily creep into any immaterialist ontology and ruin it (unless it is accounted for, like what Jon Barwise does in his work). We can't bootstrap belief from inert conditions - sense and participation are implicit and inherent in any discussion of belief, whether we acknowledge it or not. I study the case of machines believing in some limited number of sentences in computer science, with some rules of reasoning, and study what they can believe, known, observe, feel, etc. With precise definition of each terms. It is testable, as comp predicts they will believe in some precise physics that we can compare with nature, and so we can refute comp+classical-epistemology. As it is a very weak theory (comp is weak, and classical epistemology too), its refutation would make us learning a lot. If it is not refuted, then we have a much simpler theory of everything, ---simpler than the actual one, which is QM (+general relativity). And the new theory explains the difference between qualia and quanta, and this is a point where QM fails to address explicitly the question, although with Everett it leans toward the comp theory. Bruno We need to have a long discussion as to how the quanta emerges in such a way as to allow the appearance of a physical world (a 'reality') for multiple observers. I am assuming that an observer is defined as the intersection of infinitely many computations as per comp. See sane04 for a precise rendering on this, based on the first person statistics in the UD* or arithmetic. Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- 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- l...@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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Tuesday, February 26, 2013 6:30:59 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 20:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, February 25, 2013 1:26:49 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 17:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of *a 'model'.* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't define that, but we have a lot of example. Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then Bruno gave a slap to Craig would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not, and don't give you a slap. How do you know that we met or didn't meet? Maybe it was just a dream? Then it is true, or false, with respect to the dream. I was only illustrating a concept, known to de not definable, although approximable. There isn't necessarily a particular condition which is true or false in a dream. More often it just 'seems like' someone is your old college roommate in one sense, but maybe your brother also. Both truth and belief here are a posteriori to the sense experience of the dream itself, which is a gestalt and not meaningfully described by either-or expectations with respect to either belief or truth. In a dream, we don't know what we experience and we don't not-know what we experience. This is a truer representation of sense than public realism, which is disambiguated by thermodynamic irreversibility among the total collection of experiences. When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we might be wrong, that is not true. Not necessarily. There may be no objective truth quality. ? Sense pre-figures truth. Truth is a proportion or qualitative ratio of sense agreements against disagreements. We may be creating belief synthetically by our expectation. That is called wishful thinking. No, I'm talking about the idea that we have no beliefs at all until we question them. It may be an analytical abstraction that is a posteriori. We don't literally 'have a belief' that the sky is blue - we participate in a universe in which it seems that the sky is blue. It's a bit of sleight of hand to insert this presumption of belief where in fact the experience of the sky's color is not derived from any proposition or logical relation. If your criteria is wishful thinking, that might explain your question begging type of 'argument'. If you ask someone whether they believe that eating meat is immoral, they may not have had an opinion one way or another about it before you asked. There may not be an expectation that their spontaneously projected 'belief' reflects something that is 'true', but just an expression of what makes sense to them - what feels best in their mind or seems appropriate for their idea of their own character. I think it is better to try to see on what we agree, and build from that. Statements like eating meat is immoral are very complex high level statements not well suited for reasoning. If what I'm saying is true, eating meat is immoral is a very simple statement on the personal level, and ideal for pointing out the bad assumptions of reasoning as an assembled low level mechanism. Children can become vegetarian (I have known one in my family) because they grasp the simple reality of how animals become meat, not because they have deliberated anything with any particular complexity. It would be very complex
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 2/26/2013 4:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. That raises questions like, Where were we when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Or more generally does the physics of every universe consistent with comp include quasi-classical physics? It seems that it is necessary for brains to exist and to have the ideas on which comp is based. Are we to regard this as just a fortunate anthropic accident? 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
Brent: forgive my weak 'brain': in the turmoil of BackAndForces on this list it faded what you (really?) mean by quasi classical physics brains and what 'ideas' is (your) 'comp' based on? I think whatever we 'experience' is a (fortunate?) anthropic accident (incident?). I put (your) to comp, because I am not sure about Bruno's IF true - and you did not refer to it either. Dinos? We know so little about the past of this world - even about not-so ancient HUMAN past (Dravidians) so infulential into our present world. Or how the Simians straightened up their spine to become human? (I am in favor of the 'aequatic ape' dream). And others. I hope you are not talking about TOE derived at Dino-time, or later. (BTW: was a *neuron* of a dino bigger than that of today's mouse? With what size atoms? I asked this questions from many bio-people over the past 50 years - no answer so far. Maybe the Savants of this list can answer it?) JM On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 4:03 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/26/2013 4:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. That raises questions like, Where were we when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Or more generally does the physics of every universe consistent with comp include quasi-classical physics? It seems that it is necessary for brains to exist and to have the ideas on which comp is based. Are we to regard this as just a fortunate anthropic accident? 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?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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
I hope you are not talking about TOE derived at Dino-time, or later. (BTW: was a neuron of a dino bigger than that of today's mouse? With what size atoms? I asked this questions from many bio-people over the past 50 years - no answer so far. Maybe the Savants of this list can answer it?) I'm not a savant but I would bet against a correlation between animal and neuron size. Neurons are computational units and the time it takes for electrical and chemical messages to propagate through them is crucial to their function. They come in a variety of sizes precisely for this reason. Increasing neuron size overall would make the brain slower with higher energy expenditure, so it's maladaptive. Not sure what you mean by the size of atoms?? JM On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 4:03 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/26/2013 4:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. That raises questions like, Where were we when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Or more generally does the physics of every universe consistent with comp include quasi-classical physics? It seems that it is necessary for brains to exist and to have the ideas on which comp is based. Are we to regard this as just a fortunate anthropic accident? 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?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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 2/26/2013 1:46 PM, John Mikes wrote: Brent: forgive my weak 'brain': in the turmoil of BackAndForces on this list it faded what you (really?) mean by quasi classical physics I mean the world model of Newton and Maxwell plus a little randomness from QM: consisting of distinct objects in definite locations, not wave functions in infinite dimensional Hilbert space. brains Biological information processors found within skulls. and what 'ideas' is (your) 'comp' based on? ?? My comp? I think whatever we 'experience' is a (fortunate?) anthropic accident (incident?). I put (your) to comp, because I am not sure about Bruno's IF true - and you did not refer to it either. Dinos? We know so little about the past of this world - even about not-so ancient HUMAN past (Dravidians) so infulential into our present world. Or how the Simians straightened up their spine to become human? (I am in favor of the 'aequatic ape' dream). And others. Dinosaurs were just an example. I wondered what Bruno meant by saying we were here from the beginning. Was he denying there was a pre-human past? I hope you are not talking about TOE derived at Dino-time, or later. (BTW: was a */neuron/* of a dino bigger than that of today's mouse? With what size atoms? I asked this questions from many bio-people over the past 50 years - no answer so far. Some of them were certainly longer. Isaac Asimov once speculated that the size of dinosaurs was limited because the larger an animal the faster it can run, but dinosaurs had unmylenated neurons (like those in our brains) which are quite slow in transmitting signals. So when a dinosaur got very big he could run off a cliff right in front of him because the signal from his eyes to brain to feet would propagate more slowly than his forward motion. :-) Brent Maybe the Savants of this list can answer it?) JM On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 4:03 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/26/2013 4:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in all of them. That raises questions like, Where were we when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Or more generally does the physics of every universe consistent with comp include quasi-classical physics? It seems that it is necessary for brains to exist and to have the ideas on which comp is based. Are we to regard this as just a fortunate anthropic accident? 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 mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto: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. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2641/6133 - Release Date: 02/25/13 -- 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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 17:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't define that, but we have a lot of example. Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then Bruno gave a slap to Craig would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not, and don't give you a slap. When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we might be wrong, that is not true. p is true means that it is the case that p, in the domain where p is supposed to be applied. If you believe that Obama is the president of the USA, it means that you believe that in our local geographico- historical situation, it is a true fact, even if you can have a doubt, because you might find conceivable to wake up, perhaps younger, and that Ronald Reagan is the president of the US. A black pothead being a president of America... that sound like a dream, after all. We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often the term know for the beliefs based on quite common sharable assumption, like O has a successor, or the laws of addition and multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs. I don't think it has to be that simple. You are only taking your own word for that limitation on your sense. We could have all kinds of intuitive influences beneath the threshold of our conscious awareness which are in fact true beyond mere belief. True is not opposed to belief. Sometimes some beliefs can be true. But once a belief concerns a reality different from consciousness-here-and- now, I don't see how we can be sure that any statement is true, independently of their plausibility. We can be failed on all dreamable content, except one (actual consciousness). Rather than assuming that belief is a logical stick model built up from nothing, It is not build up for nothing. It is an arithmetical relation between a number, and some universal numbers. I think it makes more sense to see it as a local fog which interferes with out larger grounding in the sense of eternity and totality. Knowledge does that. By linking belief with truth. We say: Jim believed that Brussels was the capital of the USA, but now, he know better. We don't say Jim knew that Brussels was the capital of the USA, but now, he believed better. We can't bootstrap belief from inert conditions - sense and participation are implicit and inherent in any discussion of belief, whether we acknowledge it or not. I study the case of machines believing in some limited number of sentences in computer science, with some rules of reasoning, and study what they can believe, known, observe, feel, etc. With precise definition of each terms. It is testable, as comp predicts they will believe in some precise physics that we can compare with nature, and so we can refute comp+classical-epistemology. As it is a very weak theory (comp is weak, and classical epistemology too), its refutation would make us learning a lot. If it is not refuted, then we have a much simpler theory of everything, ---simpler than the actual one, which is QM (+general relativity). And the new theory explains the difference
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 2/25/2013 1:26 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't define that, but we have a lot of example. Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then Bruno gave a slap to Craig would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not, and don't give you a slap. Dear Bruno and Craig, The slap is a physical action. How was it defined? Bruno, the physical world that we perceive our bodies to be immersed in, is acting in this example as the definer of truth. Is this your intention? When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we might be wrong, that is not true. But there could exist a physical world different from the one we are in that has an entity in it and there is a physical condition that validates the belief of that entity, no? p is true means that it is the case that p, in the domain where p is supposed to be applied. Can the domain be defined recursively? For example, what if p is the proposition that p' is experienced and p' is the proposition that p'' is experienced and ... ? If you believe that Obama is the president of the USA, it means that you believe that in our local geographico-historical situation, it is a true fact, even if you can have a doubt, because you might find conceivable to wake up, perhaps younger, and that Ronald Reagan is the president of the US. A black pothead being a president of America... that sound like a dream, after all. A dream only for some... We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often the term know for the beliefs based on quite common sharable assumption, like O has a successor, or the laws of addition and multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs. I don't think it has to be that simple. You are only taking your own word for that limitation on your sense. We could have all kinds of intuitive influences beneath the threshold of our conscious awareness which are in fact true beyond mere belief. True is not opposed to belief. Sometimes some beliefs can be true. ISTM that a belief is contingent on the existence of something that contains a representation of that belief, be it a human mind or a Platonic algorithm or whatever else may satisfy the role. But once a belief concerns a reality different from consciousness-here-and-now, I don't see how we can be sure that any statement is true, independently of their plausibility. We can be failed on all dreamable content, except one (actual consciousness). If infinitely many physical worlds exist then there could be a 'reality' for each and every belief. I conjecture that most of those physical realities would be Boltzmann brains. Rather than assuming that belief is a logical stick model built up from nothing, It is not build up for nothing. It is an arithmetical relation between a number, and some universal numbers. No, Bruno. The fact that we can construct any number from the empty set explicitly demands that we are building up things from nothing. This does not, IMHO, remove the 'reality' from them so long as the mutual agreement actions are possible. I think it makes more sense to see it as a local fog which interferes with out larger grounding in the sense of eternity and totality. Knowledge does that. By linking belief with truth. But where does the 'truth' obtain from if not a physical instance? It need not be ontological primitive, as a physical world could be defined as merely that which at least 3 observers can agree upon as being real. We say: Jim believed that Brussels was the capital of the USA, but now, he know better. We don't say Jim knew that Brussels was the capital of the USA, but now, he believed better. Careful that we don't define a word to have a property and then use the word to show the existence of that property. This is bootstrapping! This is something that can easily creep into any immaterialist ontology and ruin it (unless it is accounted for, like what Jon Barwise does in his work). We can't bootstrap belief from inert conditions - sense and participation are implicit and inherent in any discussion of belief, whether we acknowledge it or not. I study the case of machines believing in some limited number of sentences in computer science, with some
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 22 Feb 2013, at 17:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often the term know for the beliefs based on quite common sharable assumption, like O has a successor, or the laws of addition and multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs. It is not obvious, and is based on the fact, known already by Gödel, that machines or formal systems can prove their own incompleteness theorem. The rest follows from the Theatetus' definition of knowledge, and some work. Isn't the proof of incompleteness also incomplete? It would not be a proof. But I see perhaps what you mean. The proof is complete as far as you believe in the multiplication and addition tables. i.e. we don't know that what senses we have access to unless our personal range of sense informs us about them. We may in fact have intuitions which are true without being believed or even detected explicitly (hence blindsight). Yes. Our most elementary beliefs are always non justifiable assumptions. Most are plausibly imposed to us by millions of years of evolution. But that very statement presuppose them to make sense. I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). I think that if QM were applied to itself, QM is an abstract theory about physical objects, not about abstract theories. If you meant that QM applies to physicists, seen as physical object, then we get the MWI. I mean that if the kind of thought processes which have gone into QM were applied to the theories of QM themselves, then it would likely mandate that QM can only be as true as it is false. Every truth in the theory can only exist by borrowing from a false condition that it creates. ? QM is inferred through observation and occam razor. It is just a very simple theory which explains a lot. but with comp, we have to deduce it from arithmetic, if we want to test the comp solution of the mind body problem, that is comp theory of qualia, which includes the quanta. it would likely conclude that it was at once the truest and the least true theory to date, and I would agree with that. see above - QM is true/false just as quantum is particle/wave... That makes no sense, even as a metaphor. unless theories are exempt from physics... which would mean that QM is just unacknowledged dualism. Not QM without collapse of the wave. But with the wave collapse, QM is indeed a form of dualism. Bruno Craig ? Bruno Craig and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Feb 2013, at 17:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of *a 'model'.* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? Because some time our beliefs are true. What does 'true' mean if we can only believe? We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often the term know for the beliefs based on quite common sharable assumption, like O has a successor, or the laws of addition and multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs. I don't think it has to be that simple. You are only taking your own word for that limitation on your sense. We could have all kinds of intuitive influences beneath the threshold of our conscious awareness which are in fact true beyond mere belief. Rather than assuming that belief is a logical stick model built up from nothing, I think it makes more sense to see it as a local fog which interferes with out larger grounding in the sense of eternity and totality. We can't bootstrap belief from inert conditions - sense and participation are implicit and inherent in any discussion of belief, whether we acknowledge it or not. Craig It is not obvious, and is based on the fact, known already by Gödel, that machines or formal systems can prove their own incompleteness theorem. The rest follows from the Theatetus' definition of knowledge, and some work. Isn't the proof of incompleteness also incomplete? It would not be a proof. But I see perhaps what you mean. The proof is complete as far as you believe in the multiplication and addition tables. i.e. we don't know that what senses we have access to unless our personal range of sense informs us about them. We may in fact have intuitions which are true without being believed or even detected explicitly (hence blindsight). Yes. Our most elementary beliefs are always non justifiable assumptions. Most are plausibly imposed to us by millions of years of evolution. But that very statement presuppose them to make sense. I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). I think that if QM were applied to itself, QM is an abstract theory about physical objects, not about abstract theories. If you meant that QM applies to physicists, seen as physical object, then we get the MWI. I mean that if the kind of thought processes which have gone into QM were applied to the theories of QM themselves, then it would likely mandate that QM can only be as true as it is false. Every truth in the theory can only exist by borrowing from a false condition that it creates. ? QM is inferred through observation and occam razor. It is just a very simple theory which explains a lot. but with comp, we have to deduce it from arithmetic, if we want to test the comp solution of the mind body problem, that is comp theory of qualia, which
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 2/23/2013 7:57 AM, John Mikes wrote: Brent: my answer is simple, indeed: we have only PARTIAL knowledge about anything, Sure. But that doesn't prevent true beliefs. I believe there's a refrigerator in my kitchen. Am I certain - no. Am I right - yes. accumulating over millennia (and probably continuing to do so) - consequently ALL we can cite as PROOF is based on such partial view, subject to improvement (change?) later on. This is why I prefer the conditional voice in conclusions. That's why I said 'depending on the standard of proof'. There are many propositions which are 'proven' enough that I'm willing to act on them. Mathematical proofs are certain - unfortunately they aren't necessarily true because they are only conditional on the axioms. My essay dissappeared from the WEB when the carrier ISP discontinued it (Prodigy) around 2003 (without notice). I have a copy I consider a bit obsolete in my ongoing views, I will e-mail it to you in a private mail. I hope it goes through. I'll look forward to it. Brent John M On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:57 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: John, you have referred to your essay a few times but I have never seen it. Is it available on the web somewhere? I wonder what you mean by There is no ideally correct case.? Do you mean it is never the case that a belief is provable (I might agree with that - depending on the standard of proof). Do you mean it is never the case that a belief is true (I disagree with that). Or do you mean that neither of these is ideal? Brent On 2/21/2013 1:00 PM, John Mikes wrote: (I THINK: Brent): But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. (I THINK: Bruno): Yes, but we can't know that. (again I THINK Brent:) I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. (again I THINK Bruno:) I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. JM: There is NO ideally correct case. I define 'belief' as being possibly based on hearsay as well (religious etc.) (May I refer to my 2000 essay: Science - Religion, several times quoted on these pages). JM -- 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 mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto: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. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2639/6123 - Release Date: 02/22/13 -- 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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
John, What do you mean by there is no ideally correct case? I can understand if you sincerely doubt about elementary arithmetic, though. In that case the term research lost his meaning, and we get a completely instrumentalist conception of science. We get the type of relativism used by my opponents i Brussels and Paris, that is philosophers who asserted that truth = power, and who illustrated it by rejecting my thesis while admitting not having seen any flaws. One said to me simply: we have the money. Those are cynical people who vindicate corruption, simply. We don't know the truth, but to make sense of research we need some faith in it. Bruno On 21 Feb 2013, at 22:00, John Mikes wrote: (I THINK: Brent): But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. (I THINK: Bruno): Yes, but we can't know that. (again I THINK Brent:) I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. (again I THINK Bruno:) I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. JM: There is NO ideally correct case. I define 'belief' as being possibly based on hearsay as well (religious etc.) (May I refer to my 2000 essay: Science - Religion, several times quoted on these pages). JM On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 5:58 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Yes. Actually logicians made this explicit, where most scientists are unaware that their scientific beliefs are hypotheses. Many believe that they are just truth. Well, not all, of course. Some scientists have still a scientific view, thanks God! :) Bruno Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * ...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * ...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:11:36 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of *a 'model'.* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own knowledge is only belief? It is not obvious, and is based on the fact, known already by Gödel, that machines or formal systems can prove their own incompleteness theorem. The rest follows from the Theatetus' definition of knowledge, and some work. Isn't the proof of incompleteness also incomplete? i.e. we don't know that what senses we have access to unless our personal range of sense informs us about them. We may in fact have intuitions which are true without being believed or even detected explicitly (hence blindsight). I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). I think that if QM were applied to itself, QM is an abstract theory about physical objects, not about abstract theories. If you meant that QM applies to physicists, seen as physical object, then we get the MWI. I mean that if the kind of thought processes which have gone into QM were applied to the theories of QM themselves, then it would likely mandate that QM can only be as true as it is false. Every truth in the theory can only exist by borrowing from a false condition that it creates. it would likely conclude that it was at once the truest and the least true theory to date, and I would agree with that. see above - QM is true/false just as quantum is particle/wave... unless theories are exempt from physics... which would mean that QM is just unacknowledged dualism. Craig ? Bruno Craig and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Yes. Actually logicians made this explicit, where most scientists are unaware that their scientific beliefs are hypotheses. Many believe that they are just truth. Well, not all, of course. Some scientists have still a scientific view, thanks God! :) Bruno Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * *...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... * Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Yes. Actually logicians made this explicit, where most scientists are unaware that their scientific beliefs are hypotheses. Many believe that they are just truth. Well, not all, of course. Some scientists have still a scientific view, thanks God! :) Bruno Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * ...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * ...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/...; Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about 'everything' that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Best regards John Mikes On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt. MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species. MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest. MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population. MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations. MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:41, John Mikes wrote: Bruno, I have no argument with you. Let me insert a remark into your text below (in large font bold italics) John On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Or a Nobel Prize winner. I am afraid you are right. But there might be some exceptions, I hope. There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno (And I wrote: We THINK we know) OK. But of course we think we know does not entail that we know, and even if we know, we can't say it publicly. That's probably why in natural language, when we say I think that p, it means usually p but I am not sure. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * ...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * ...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/...; Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about 'everything' that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Best regards John Mikes On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt. MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species. MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest. MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population. MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations. MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@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
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of *a 'model'.* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). I think that if QM were applied to itself, it would likely conclude that it was at once the truest and the least true theory to date, and I would agree with that. Craig and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Yes. Actually logicians made this explicit, where most scientists are unaware that their scientific beliefs are hypotheses. Many believe that they are just truth. Well, not all, of course. Some scientists have still a scientific view, thanks God! :) Bruno Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * *...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... * Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * *...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/...* Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about * 'everything'* that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Best regards John Mikes * * * * On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 21 Feb 2013, at 15:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:58:20 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:15, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. Yes, but we can't know that. Can we know that we can't know that? Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know. It is not obvious, and is based on the fact, known already by Gödel, that machines or formal systems can prove their own incompleteness theorem. The rest follows from the Theatetus' definition of knowledge, and some work. I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. OK. (assuming QM is correct, of course). I think that if QM were applied to itself, QM is an abstract theory about physical objects, not about abstract theories. If you meant that QM applies to physicists, seen as physical object, then we get the MWI. it would likely conclude that it was at once the truest and the least true theory to date, and I would agree with that. ? Bruno Craig and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Yes. Actually logicians made this explicit, where most scientists are unaware that their scientific beliefs are hypotheses. Many believe that they are just truth. Well, not all, of course. Some scientists have still a scientific view, thanks God! :) Bruno Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * ...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * ...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/...; Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about 'everything' that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Best regards John Mikes
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 2/21/2013 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. I'm not sure what you meant by that last sentence. Of course some things are provable but not true because, even though the proofs are valid, one or more of the axioms are false. But that doesn't make belief=provable ideal; the ideal is belief=true. 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
John, you have referred to your essay a few times but I have never seen it. Is it available on the web somewhere? I wonder what you mean by There is no ideally correct case.? Do you mean it is never the case that a belief is provable (I might agree with that - depending on the standard of proof). Do you mean it is never the case that a belief is true (I disagree with that). Or do you mean that neither of these is ideal? Brent On 2/21/2013 1:00 PM, John Mikes wrote: (I THINK: Brent): But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. (I THINK: Bruno): Yes, but we can't know that. (again I THINK Brent:) I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. (again I THINK Bruno:) I define belief by hypothesis or derived from hypotheses. That's why in the ideally correct case, belief = provable. This works because provable does not entail truth. JM: There is NO ideally correct case. I define 'belief' as being possibly based on hearsay as well (religious etc.) (May I refer to my 2000 essay: Science - Religion, several times quoted on these pages). JM -- 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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to a few concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of a 'model'. There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * ...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * ...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/...; Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about 'everything' that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Best regards John Mikes On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt. MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species. MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest. MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population. MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations. MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@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. 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
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On 2/20/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of */_a 'model'._/* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, But then, according to you, if they happen to be true they are knowledge. I'd say it's the other way around, scientists have no beliefs, only hypotheses. If you ask a physicist, for example, if he believes GR he will probably give a complicated answer about how it is our best theory of macroscopic gravitation and it has proven correct in many experiments and it is our best model - BUT it is almost certainly not right because its inconsistent with QM. and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. Is that true of logicians too. :-) Brent There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * */...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... /* Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * */...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/.../* Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about*'everything'* that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Best regards John Mikes */ /* */ /* On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population.* *MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations.* *MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. **MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.* ** * * * * -- 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 mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
Bruno, I have no argument with you. Let me insert a remark into your text below (in *large font bold italics*) John On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi John, On 19 Feb 2013, at 23:28, John Mikes wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of *a 'model'.* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. A scientist know nothing. Just nothing, not even his own consciousness. In science we have only beliefs, and the best we can hope, is to refute them, by making them clear enough. I insist on this because there is a widespread misconsception in popular science, but also among many materialist scientists (= many scientists), that we can know something scientifically, but that is provably wrong with comp, and plausiibly wrong with common sense. A scientist who make public his knowledge is a pseudo-scientist, or a pseudo-religious person, or is simply mad. *Or a Nobel Prize winner.* There is always an interrogation mark after any theory. Theories are beliefs, never public knowledge. Even 1+1=2. But we can (temporally) agree on some theories. We have to do that to refute them, and learn. Bruno *(And I wrote: We THINK we know)* * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * *...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... * Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * *...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/...* Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about * 'everything'* that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Best regards John Mikes * * * * On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population.* *MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations.* *MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. **MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.* ** * * * * -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@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
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 5:28:03 PM UTC-5, JohnM wrote: Craig, it seems we engaged in a fruitful discussion- thank you. I want to reflect to *a few* concepts only from it to clarify MY stance. First my use of *a 'model'.* There are different models, from the sexy young females over the math-etc. descriptions of theoretical concepts (some not so sexy). - What I (after Robert Rosen?) use by this word is an extract of something, we may not know in toto. Close to an 'Occamized' version, but cut mostly by ignorance of the 'rest of it', not for added clarity. Applied to whatever we know TODAY about the world. Or: we THINK WE KNOW. * You mention 'statistical' in connection with adaptation. I deny the validity of statistics (and so: of probability) because it depends on the borderlines to observe in counting the items. 1000 years ago (or maybe yesterday) such boderlines were different, consequently different statistics came up with different chances of occurrence in them (not even mentioning the indifference of WHEN all those chances may materialize). * *...within a looped continuum of perceived causality... * Perceived causality is restricted to the 'model' content, while it may be open to be entailed by instigators beyond our present knowledge. Furthermore (in the flimsy concept we have about 'time' I cannot see a 'loop' - only a propagating curve as everything changes by the time we think to 'close' the loop (like the path of a planet as the Sun moves). * *...I couldn't agree with you more. That's a big part of what my TOE is all about http://multisenserealism.com/8-matter-energy/...* Your TOE? - MY FOOT. - Agnostically we are so far from even speaking about * 'everything'* that the consecutively observable levels of gathering some knowledge (adjusted to our ever evolving mental capabilities into some personal 'mini-solipsism' - different always for everyone) is a great pretension of the human conventional sciences. (Don't take it personally, please). We LIVE and THINK within (my) model. Whatever is beyond is unknowable. But it affects the model content. The URL was an enjoyable reading - with Stephen's addition to it. Thanks John, I agree, my TOE pretensions are more tongue in cheek than literal. What I'm claiming is that I think I have a plausible (the only plausible, IMO) concept of how mind and body (and by extension physics and experience) relate. The rest is extrapolated from that and I think suggests that it can work and opens up some new possibilities for understanding time and significance, qualia, etc. Thanks, Craig Best regards John Mikes * * * * On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population.* *MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations.* *MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. **MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.* ** * * * * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. 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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Monday, January 28, 2013 4:10:48 PM UTC-5, JohnM wrote:
Craig:
beautiful series. Mostly agreeable terms.
I used some of it in a slightly different sense, but not oppositional;
Thanks John,
I like your comments a lot as well and I think they add to the discussion...
*Organisms do not adapt. *We have to realize the diversity of ALL
existence and similarly looking groups show differences, observed. or
beyond our capability of detection. Those with closer details to fit into
the existing (also unlimited?) variety of nature will survive, giving to
the scientist the view of 'adaptation.
A good example is the activity of antibiotics: no microbe will adapt (or
decide a change in offspring development!) upon REALIZING the danger of an
antibiotic, so whichever kinds are receptive, will die. The different
variations (undetected by our ongoing measuring capabilities) will survive
and 'fill up' the empty niche fast, giving the impression upon the
identically identified (but different) species to have become immune.
Indeed it is a 'natural selection' (see below).
A great point. The term adaptation is:
1. Literal only when it is applied to the (figurative) statistical 'trends'
of the (figurative) 'body' of the species.
2. Figurative when applied to all other literal, ('public physics') bodies
of individual organisms.
Adaptation makes a leap of inference which can be misleading, as you say,
and I like your example, that it isn't even that a whole aggregate group of
bacteria or their offspring's offspring has 'adapted' to anything, they
have simply not died in the face of some local condition. Likewise the
non-resistant bacteria did not (literally) 'fail to survive', as there was
nothing to fail at, since survival is the default mode of any organism. You
could say that it failed figuratively, since the end result is that some
survive and some did not, but it is dangerous to literalize that into a
Social Darwinist assumption that survival is a game in which you can win if
you better learn the rules.
With a human being, it is possible that we could improve our chances
technologically if we better learn the rules, but the rules could also
change, or our technology could have unforeseen consequences which nullify
their benefit at some point anyhow. Overpopulation presents a scary
proposition in that we are in the unique position of having our own
biological purpose possibly be the greatest obstacle to fulfilling our
human desires for high quality of life. What does an organism do if it can
reproduce so much that it makes itself into a pestilence for itself?
*Natural selection *(see above) comes back to diversity.
*The Fittest and their survival *refers to the circumstances and their
change: Dinosaurs were the 'fittest' when they got extinct, because of 2ary
changes in the environment. John is right to eliminate the superlative. Fit
fir survival is sufficient.
I didn't see where John eliminated the superlative, but I agree that it
should be.
*Adaptation *would imply evaluation of what's wrong and how's it better
and THEN direct changes in achieving such. A social group MAY do that (not
many to be found) but 'species'? especially ONE member in its lifetime? not
likely.
I didn't read this one until after I did my long comment above, but yes, I
agree. You said it a lot more concisely than I did.
*Random? * I deny the term since it's application would negate the
possibility of prediction of 'the next step in natural sciences. There may
be applicable circumstances among which we don't know how to select the
most likely one, as I recall Russell's relatively random case, but once
we can 'generate' randomity, it is not random.
I am increasingly suspicious of 'random' myself. What if there is no
'random'? Yes, I like relatively or practically random better.
* Chance? * coinciding with more than we know of at present.
Sure, yes, my view is that chance and choice are like two adjacent regions
within a looped continuum of perceived causality. The difference has to do
with the scope of the view that we can have of the context from our limited
and highly idiosyncratic human perceptual capacities (even with their
instrumental extension).
*Evolution *IMO and in the sense of Craig's word of misconception hides
some teleological content. If the 'end' (goal?) is fixed, Why EVOLUTION?
why did the Creator(???) make it perfect to begin with?
In my (agnostic) view there is an infinite complexity out there of which
only some proportion infiltrates our knowable world in a steadily enriching
fashion - adjusted to the mental capabilities we carry. This is our MODEL
of the world.
Here's where I think what I was saying earlier about Literal and Figurative
applies to MODEL:
We can be said to have a 'MODEL':
1. Only figuratively, when applied to our concretely real sensory-motor
interactions ('private physics').
2.
Re: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population.* *MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations.* *MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. **MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.* I agree that all those things are misconceptions, except for survival of the fittest which is certainly not a misconception but is without a doubt true, just like all tautologies. By the way, for some reason that term is always associated with Darwin but he is not the one who coined it, Herbert Spencer was the first to used the phrase in a book of his that came out 5 years after Darwin wrote Origins of Species. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
On Monday, January 28, 2013 12:33:23 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population.* *MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations.* *MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. **MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.* I agree that all those things are misconceptions, except for survival of the fittest which is certainly not a misconception but is without a doubt true, just like all tautologies. By the way, for some reason that term is always associated with Darwin but he is not the one who coined it, Herbert Spencer was the first to used the phrase in a book of his that came out 5 years after Darwin wrote Origins of Species. The phrase 'survival of the fittest' is only a tautology if you conflate fitness with idealized universal qualities like strength or power. The page I linked is good because it reveals that this is not at all supported by the science, and that in fact, any trait or lack of a trait can turn out to provide an individual replicator with the 'best fit' to a specific niche, at a specific time. There is no universal 'fitness' which says that being good at cracking open nuts or storing water in a hump are going to make you 'the fittest'. Really 'fittest' is not true. As the link explains: CORRECTION: Though survival of the fittest is the catchphrase of natural selection, survival of the fit enough is more accurate. In most populations, organisms with many different genetic variations survive, reproduce, and leave offspring carrying their genes in the next generation. It is not simply the one or two best individuals in the population that pass their genes on to the next generation. This is apparent in the populations around us: for example, a plant may not have the genes to flourish in a drought, or a predator may not be quite fast enough to catch her prey every time she is hungry. These individuals may not be the fittest in the population, but they are fit enough to reproduce and pass their genes on to the next generation. Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@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: Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
Craig: beautiful series. Mostly agreeable terms. I used some of it in a slightly different sense, but not oppositional; *Organisms do not adapt. *We have to realize the diversity of ALL existence and similarly looking groups show differences, observed. or beyond our capability of detection. Those with closer details to fit into the existing (also unlimited?) variety of nature will survive, giving to the scientist the view of 'adaptation. A good example is the activity of antibiotics: no microbe will adapt (or decide a change in offspring development!) upon REALIZING the danger of an antibiotic, so whichever kinds are receptive, will die. The different variations (undetected by our ongoing measuring capabilities) will survive and 'fill up' the empty niche fast, giving the impression upon the identically identified (but different) species to have become immune. Indeed it is a 'natural selection' (see below). *Natural selection *(see above) comes back to diversity. *The Fittest and their survival *refers to the circumstances and their change: Dinosaurs were the 'fittest' when they got extinct, because of 2ary changes in the environment. John is right to eliminate the superlative. Fit fir survival is sufficient. *Adaptation *would imply evaluation of what's wrong and how's it better and THEN direct changes in achieving such. A social group MAY do that (not many to be found) but 'species'? especially ONE member in its lifetime? not likely. *Random? * I deny the term since it's application would negate the possibility of prediction of 'the next step in natural sciences. There may be applicable circumstances among which we don't know how to select the most likely one, as I recall Russell's relatively random case, but once we can 'generate' randomity, it is not random. * Chance? * coinciding with more than we know of at present. *Evolution *IMO and in the sense of Craig's word of misconception hides some teleological content. If the 'end' (goal?) is fixed, Why EVOLUTION? why did the Creator(???) make it perfect to begin with? In my (agnostic) view there is an infinite complexity out there of which only some proportion infiltrates our knowable world in a steadily enriching fashion - adjusted to the mental capabilities we carry. This is our MODEL of the world. There are relations we may (not?) know about and effects unknown upon cases we think we (may) know about. I like the Flat Earth as an example, Brent wrote the other day an appreciable list of such. I would add the case of 'electricity' observed in certain fashion, described and calculated (used?) as we presently understand it. It may be more, different from what we think today. Volta and Faraday captured one aspect only. And we feel SOOO smart! John Mikes On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population.* *MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations.* *MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. **MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.* ** * * * * -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@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 post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@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.
Misconceptions of Natural Selection and Evolution
I was so impressed with this page http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1 that I thought it was worth listing a few here: *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection involves organisms trying to adapt.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.* *MISCONCEPTION: The fittest organisms in a population are those that are strongest, healthiest, fastest, and/or largest.* *MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population.* *MISCONCEPTION: All traits of organisms are adaptations.* *MISCONCEPTION: Evolutionary theory implies that life evolved (and continues to evolve) randomly, or by chance. **MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.* ** * * * * -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@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.
