Re: belief, faith, truth
Le 14-févr.-06, à 16:20, uv a écrit : Bruno said For me, all questioning is amenable to science, or put in another way, we can kept a scientific attitude, in all fields, including those asking for faith. Fair enough, as long as we all know what a 'scientific attitude' is. Kuhn, Popper, Wittgenstein, Derrida ??? Popper. Or best (but compatible), the lobian machine, which is humble and modest. I have already argue that scientific attitude, after Godel, is the attitude of being able to conceive that we can be wrong, so that we are invited to listen to the other. popper says similar things, and in some text he based that metatheoretical issue on the incompletenbess phenomena. Correct machines can tapped into a truth that transcends machines reason, but not into a truth that contradicts machines reason. Unless the machine suffers from some bad faith. The same for humans; scientist or believer alike. In the (ex) Soviet Union, Lyssenko has defended a crazy biology contradicting more and more the evidences, leading to one of the worst famine. So basically machines are a 'good idea'. But a different idea this century to last century or the one before. Let us say that I consider that the discovery by Post and Turing (mainly) of the Universal Machine is an event which really force us to reconsider the very meaning of the word machine. Now we know some are universal, and that notion of univerality is very well founded empirically and conceptually. The problem is that as long as we discourage rationalist to study theology and doing research in theology, we are abandoning it to the irrationalists or to the dishonest people, like those who will use some natural human fears to manipulate people and get power. The most annoying example of this is creationism. I think USA has now been led to great clashes over 'creationism', which most scientists do not see as scientific at all..They see, probably correctly, creationism to be a threat, not part of a dialogue. I agree with this. Creationist does not build part of a dialogue. In fact to the point where they would rather creationism did not exist. Enthusiasm can thus bring problems. But Americans are basically at heart enthusiasts and Babbits, to generalise. The old Krio saying is dog na dog. (Americans or dogs will remain as Americans (or dogs)). I only use USA as an example, the Middle East is far worse. There is no contradiction in the existence of a 100% scientific theology, still letting the religious attitudes to any personal individual choice (example the yes/no doctor attitude in the comp framework). But scientists take the view that creationism and the like are not science. There are not so much contradictions but basic problems. Scientific theology would be a lot of fun. Good point :-) But a detailed theology (and by detailed I mean roughly 'at least one book') is always tainted with dogma or has been so far AFAIK. Read Plotinus, and if you find just one dogma, just tell me. Actually I think that the use of dogma in theology is a rather recent event (about 500 after C.). Read all the neoplatonist from Pythagoras tp Proclus, you will not see any dogma. You will see fundamental principles and things like that, but this is the case in all rational approaches in any subjects. OK, sometimes you will see talks on personal mystical experiences. This can be considered as going out of science, but the neoplatonist see them as personal tools to figure out by oneself some ideas, and none of what they conclude from them need to be taken as dogma. Latest Headlines: Two more die over cartoons in Lahore Paris Hilton to be Mother Teresa in new film. Tub thumping attitudes like this do not suggest that anyone will compromise effectively. You point on very difficult problems which does not admit simple solutions. Humans are complex. Intellect has weakness emotions can work upon, a little like democracies have weakness that fanaticism can used, a little like LIFE *is* fragile (nothing new here). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Rép : belief, faith, truth (Interlude)
Ben, Danny (and list), Thanks for your interesting last posts, which I think I need to digest so as to been able to answer them synthetically for avoiding repetitions or too much awkwardness. So I will answer them at ease, and send comments as soon as possible. The posts are: http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@eskimo.com/msg08703.html (Danny) http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@eskimo.com/msg08700.html (Ben). BTW, Danny, neither my emailer, nor apparently the archive can handle accurately the go-to-line printing procedure of your emailer system. You should perhaps go to line manually. I can read your message in Ben's post, or by handling it manually myself. This happens sometimes. In the meanwhile I repeat your post below. Best regards, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- Danny's Post --- I doubt Marchal's ideas will be made widely known or popularized in the foreseeable future. The problem isn't with the name of his theory, or with any problem with Bruno per se beyond this: There doesn't seem to be an easily reducible way to summarize the theory in a manner that is digestible to anyone beyond the highly specialized in similar fields. I certainly understand the basics of some of his ideas, but when it gets into all his logical analysis I just have never found myself willing to devote myself to the time required to really get into the detail of where he is coming from. And I would consider myself highly interested in these topics and at least reasonably intelligent. Even something as mundane as the MWI (to this group at least) runs into a brickwall when presented to the layperson. You should see the conversations I have with my wife. Tell people everything is made of strings. Or space and time can be warped and curved. They may not understand the science and math behind it at all, but at least you are speaking their language. The world is not ready for his ideas. Even for the most part the world of scientists in my opinion.
Re: Artificial Philosophizing
Bruno wrote: ... and note that the coherence of taking simultaneously both a and b above is provided by the incompleteness results (Godel, ...) which can be summarized by ... no machine can grasp all aspect of machine. Bruno Thanks, Bruno, for the above and also your more lengthy response, and also to Jef for your response below. After I posted the question below about Bruno's a) and b) I realised that I had set up a false dichotomy, and I was bracing for the appeal to Godel which Bruno and in a way also Jef responsed with. I've been trying to figure out how best to pose what I was actually trying to get at and I've been busy, but I wanted say thanks for the response. For now, I think that there's a problem with defining what a machine is. As Bruno said, now we really don't know what a machine is. So in the absense of a precise definition, perhaps we end up running away from ill-defined words like machine, reason, soul, faith, etc., for who knows what personal reasons. I recognize that part of the problem is a difference in philosophy, the prime example being the Platonic vs. Aristotelian. I guess this underscores the importance of Jeanne's original question about the place for philosophy in subjects like Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps this is obvious to most of us here, but it is an interesting question. In fact, the very question Why philosophize? is actually philosophizing. We humans just can't get away from it. It's what we do naturally. And perhaps this is part of what I'm trying to get at. A machine has to be interviewed by a human in order to philosophize. We humans are somehow the source of something from nothing in a way that a machine is not (Jef's something special about the human experience). This is part of the definition of a machine, as I see it. Back to thinking. Tom -Original Message- From: Jef Allbright [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 20:18:35 -0800 Subject: Re: Artificial Philosophizing On 2/7/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So Bruno says that: a) I am a machine. b) ...no man can grasp all aspect of man A and b above both make sense to me. Jef and Brent say that we are machines who (that?) philosophize. I'll agree that was implied by my statement. I suggest we start out by concentrating on the fact that Brent and Jef don't agree with Bruno's b) above. Note that I would in fact agree with both a and b above. (And also perhaps Bruno doesn't agree with himself (Bruno's a) vs. b) above)). If we truly are machines, then by definition we should be able to (in theory) figure out the list of instructions that we follow. But wouldn't this be grasping all aspects of ourselves? If not, then what part of ourselves is outside of the realm of being able to grasp, and if so, how can we say we are machines in a totally closed rationalistic/naturalistic world? Brent and Jef's paragraphs sound mystical to me, as mystical as any other first truth assumption. I intentionally adopted a mystical tone in response to Tom's assertion about modern philosophy being the death of humanness since I was trying to relate to someone who appeared to be saying that there's something essentially special about the human experience. So I agreed, trying to show that from the subjective point of view, the human experience certainly is extraordinary, but that it's all a part of an objectively knowable, but never fully known, world. My viewpoint is mystical to the extent that Albert Einstein and Buckminster Fuller were mystical, acknowledging the mystery of our experience while remaining fully grounded in an empirical but never fully knowable reality. To go to the heart of Tom's assertion about complete self knowledge, in order for a system to fully know something, it must contain a complete model of that something within itself, therefore the system that knows must always be more complex than that which it knows. It seems to me that much endless discussion and debate about the nature of the Self, Free Will and Morality hinges on a lack of understanding of the relationship between the subjective and objective viewpoint, and that each tends to expand in ever-increasing spheres of context. Expanding the sphere of subjective understanding across an increasing scope of subjective agents and their interactions provides ever-increasing but never complete understanding of shared values that work. Expanding the sphere of objective understanding provides increasing scope of instrumental knowledge of practices that work. Combining the two by applying increasingly objective instrumental knowledge toward the promotion of increasingly shared subjective values is the very essence of moral decision-making. Paradox is always a case of insufficient context. - Jef
Re: Multiverse concepts in string theory
To clarify,that quotecomes fromJohn Peacock, the reviewer of The Cosmic Landscape for American Scientist. What he's saying is that physics, like art,is partly a function of the human aesthetic response, because empirical evidence only constrainstheories allowed in physics, but does not determine it. I would agree with him only partly, because a large part of what Peacock includes under "aesthetics" is a common preference for simplicity, which can be formalized in various ways (e.g. Kolmogorov complexity). But even taking into account the formalizable common preference for simplicity, I think there is still a role for aesthetics to play in physics. I can think of two arguments for this. One is to say that the general preference for simplicity in our aesthetic response is a result of the limited complexity of our minds. In other words, everything weconsider beautifulmust be relatively simple, but not everything simple has to be considered beautiful. Thus the most beautiful theory is not necessarily the simplest one. The other argument is that all of the formalizations of complexity leave a free parameter, for example the choice of universal Turing machine in algorithmic information theory. Our aesthetic choices can therefore be encoded into this free parameter. - Original Message - From: Kim Jones To: Wei Dai Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 10:40 PM Subject: Re: Multiverse concepts in string theory Thankyou. So it used to be "science and religion." In fact it should have been all along "science and religion and art". Is it possible that we've been missing an important part of the discussion here? Art (painting, music - whatever) is the revelation of 1st person experience; the 'word of the creator'. Take it from there Kim Jones On 14/02/2006, at 11:06 AM, Wei Dai wrote: In short, physics is a human creative art on the same level as painting and music, and that is reason enough to be proud of what the subject has achieved.
Re: Multiverse concepts in string theory
Hi Stephen, Yes I agree. But once you have many scientists believing in a certain paradigm, it takes radical new discoveries to overturn it. The lack of confirmation is usually not enough. Saibal - Original Message - From: Stephen Paul King To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 1:45 AM Subject: Re: Multiverse concepts in string theory Hi Saibal, Does this not lead one to suspect that they secretly believe SUSY to be "not even wrong" and yet seek to save face? My problem is that any scientific theory must be highly falsifiable, otherwise we are just going back to the days of Scholastic debates... http://clublet.com/why?AngelsOnTheHeadsOfPins Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: Saibal Mitra To: Stephen Paul King ; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 6:20 PM Subject: Re: Multiverse concepts in string theory Stephen, Theorists are always a bit ahead and they have already foundways to save SUSY from negative results from the LHC. Saibal - Original Message - From: Stephen Paul King To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 1:04 PM Subject: Re: Multiverse concepts in string theory Hi Norman, It will be a wonderful thing to get a confirmation by next year but I am afraid that the usual behavior of theorist will occur: the theory will be re-tinkered so that the particle masses are too massive to be created by humans. It has been happening already in astrophysics... Btw, have you any familiarity with modeling the dynamics of scalar fields in relativistic situations? I need some help. ;-) Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: Norman Samish To: Everything-list Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 1:36 AM Subject: Re: Multiverse concepts in string theory Stephen, As you say, the version of string theorywith an infinity of universes isan elegant concept. However, when you say". . . its most fundamental assumption,the existence of a supersymmerty relation between bosons and fermions, has never even come close to matching experimental observation,"one could infer that there is little likelihood that SUSY will ever be shown to bea good theory. Thismay change soon.Wikipedia says "Experimentalists have not yet found any superpartners for known particles, either because they are too massive to be created in our current particle accelerators, or because they may not exist at all. By the year 2007, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN should be ready for use, producing collisions at sufficiently high energies to detect the superpartners many theorists hope to see." So maybe, in a couple of years, there WILL be experimental observation supporting SUSY. I agree that the posts by Hal Finney and Wei Dai are well said and inspirational. Thanks, Norman
