date:20120712


On 7/12/2012 7:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/12/2012 4:04 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
We each one are free riders because we are selfish collaborators. A 
twist on selfish collaboration is the self deception: our memory is 
unconsciously distorted to support our case. we thinkl that we 
deserve more than the fair share etc. 


"Free rider" doesn't mean just a selfish collaborator.  A free rider 
is one who benefits from the enforcement of social norms, but doesn't 
contribute to their enforcement.


Brent
-


To use a currently in vogue cliché; "they got no skin in the game". 
There is net no cost for defections.


--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon

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Re: Cooperation and Free Riders


On 7/12/2012 7:04 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:



2012/7/12 Stephen P. King >


On 7/11/2012 6:47 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Stephen:

Well it愀 not cooperation between computer programs, but
cooperation of entities in the abstract level. This can be
described mathematically or simulated in a computer program. In
both cases, it starts with a game with its rules  goals  wins and
loses is created.


Hi Alberto,

OK, but can we think of the abstract level as the dual of a
physical level where physical objects play out their scattering
games? What is described by mathematics and/or simulated by
computer program does not have to just be some abstraction. We
cannot assume absolute closure and any implied externality is just
semantics of the abstractions. Abstractions simply cannot exist as
free floating entities, for this leads inevitably to contradictions.


Concerning the question of individuality, A good selfish collaborator 
must develop an individuality and !self conscience! (and we are 
talking about collaboration between selfish entities, that want as 
much benefit from the collaboration as possible).


 Hi Alberto,

I suspect that the self has a good reason for existing! I will try 
to reconstruct the rational that occurred to me the first time I read 
this posting of your. Very good stuff, I must say! Basically, the idea 
is that if there was no "self" to refer to then all agents would be free 
riders as there would ultimately be no consequence for defection 
strategies. Free riders and other parasites live so long as the host 
they infect is not yet dead. They have no inherent or automomous 
structure to preserve over arbitrarily many iterations of the game.




The point is that the entity must evaluate other individuals, but he 
is evaluated by others.


Right, there is a symmetry involved.

So to know if others will collaborate with him, he must evaluate 
himself in relation with the others, that is if I, entity A wants to 
know what to expect from B, he does evaluate B, but also has to 
evaluate what itself, A did to B in the past. This self start to have 
the attributes of a conscious moral being. A measure of self steem 
becones necessary to modulate what he can realistically demand from 
the others and so on.


It is here that we get self-reference and its behaviors and 
phenomena! Jon Barwise (with Seligman) discusses this sort of stuff in 
his wonderful book Information Flow: The Logic of Distributed Systems 
 
. I highly recommend it. You can preview it here 
.




In a computer program, the individuality would be composed of its 
memory of relevant interactions with others and the evaluation 
algorithms. It seems that humans can store the details of about 150 
other individuals. That愀 why companies with less that 150 persons can 
work efficiently without burocracy. This information is very important 
and must be syncronized with the others. Most of the talks are about 
what did who to whom and who deserve something from me because in the 
past he did something to my friend. Bellond 150 external memory is 
necessary: written records, registration cards, id numbers, Money


Interesting and very proprietary information! It reminds me of the 
small network stuff that Ball discussed in his bookCritical Mass: How 
One Thing Leads to Another 
. Where could I 
read more on this? Is there a cyclical property that acts as a memory of 
sorts in a network of that size (or less)? I get the image of something 
like a round robin tournament 
 going on




If the game is simple and/or played by a small number of players
(for example two) This game is analtyzed with Game Theory
techniques to obtain the stable strategies that make each player
to optimize its wins in a way that they can not win more and it
is inmune to attacks from other players. This is a Nash equilibrium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium


I understand and agree! My point is that equilibria to obtain,
but we cannot substitute the abstract descriptions of games for
the actual playing of the games. There is a duality involved that
cannot be collapsed without stultifying both sides.



But when the game is too complex or the players use different
strategies or they evolve and adapt, specially when the sucessful
entities give birth to new generations with mutant and/or
strategies which are a mix of the parents ones (in a way defined
in the game) Then it is necessary to simulate it within an
co

Re: Cooperation and Free Riders

2012-07-12 Thread Alberto G. Corona

Right. free rider is a pure defector. In a more realistic game, the
entities can act with mixed strategies, sometimes as free riders, others as
collaborators. This is the meaning of selfish collaborators. With the
addition that, sometimes, what benefits the individual benefits also the
collaboration.

2012/7/13 meekerdb 

>  On 7/12/2012 4:04 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>
> We each one are free riders because we are selfish collaborators. A twist
> on selfish collaboration is the self deception: our memory is unconsciously
> distorted to support our case. we thinkl that we deserve more than the fair
> share etc.
>
>
> "Free rider" doesn't mean just a selfish collaborator.  A free rider is
> one who benefits from the enforcement of social norms, but doesn't
> contribute to their enforcement.
>
> Brent
>
> --
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Re: Cooperation and Free Riders


On 7/12/2012 4:04 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
We each one are free riders because we are selfish collaborators. A twist on selfish 
collaboration is the self deception: our memory is unconsciously distorted to support 
our case. we thinkl that we deserve more than the fair share etc. 


"Free rider" doesn't mean just a selfish collaborator.  A free rider is one who benefits 
from the enforcement of social norms, but doesn't contribute to their enforcement.


Brent

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Re: Cooperation and Free Riders

2012-07-12 Thread Alberto G. Corona

2012/7/12 Stephen P. King 

>  On 7/11/2012 6:47 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>
> Stephen:
>
>  Well it´s not cooperation between computer programs, but cooperation of
> entities in the abstract level. This can be described mathematically or
> simulated in a computer program. In both cases, it starts with a game with
> its rules  goals  wins and loses is created.
>
>
> Hi Alberto,
>
> OK, but can we think of the abstract level as the dual of a physical
> level where physical objects play out their scattering games? What is
> described by mathematics and/or simulated by computer program does not have
> to just be some abstraction. We cannot assume absolute closure and any
> implied externality is just semantics of the abstractions. Abstractions
> simply cannot exist as free floating entities, for this leads inevitably to
> contradictions.
>
>
> Concerning the question of individuality, A good selfish collaborator must
develop an individuality and !self conscience! (and we are talking about
collaboration between selfish entities, that want as much benefit from the
collaboration as possible).

The point is that the entity must evaluate other individuals, but he is
evaluated by others. So to know if others will collaborate with him, he
must evaluate himself in relation with the others, that is if I, entity A
wants to know what to expect from B, he does evaluate B, but also has to
evaluate what itself, A did to B in the past. This self start to have the
attributes of a conscious moral being. A measure of self steem becones
necessary to modulate what he can realistically demand from the others and
so on.

In a computer program, the individuality would be composed of its memory of
relevant interactions with others and the evaluation algorithms. It seems
that humans can store the details of about 150 other individuals. That´s
why companies with less that 150 persons can work efficiently without
burocracy. This information is very important and must be syncronized with
the others. Most of the talks are about what did who to whom and who
deserve something from me because in the past he did something to my
friend. Bellond 150 external memory is necessary: written records,
registration cards, id numbers, Money

>
>  If the game is simple and/or played by a small number of players (for
> example two) This game is analtyzed with Game Theory techniques to obtain
> the stable strategies that make each player to optimize its wins in a way
> that they can not win more and it is inmune to attacks from other players.
> This is a Nash equilibrium.
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
>
>
> I understand and agree! My point is that equilibria to obtain, but we
> cannot substitute the abstract descriptions of games for the actual playing
> of the games. There is a duality involved that cannot be collapsed without
> stultifying both sides.
>
>
>  But when the game is too complex or the players use different strategies
> or they evolve and adapt, specially when the sucessful entities give birth
> to new generations with mutant and/or strategies which are a mix of the
> parents ones (in a way defined in the game) Then it is necessary to
> simulate it within an computer programs. This is part of the work of
> Axelrod. evolution of generations is modeled with a genetic program
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming
>
>
> Yes! This is where we get into law of large numbers situations and
> have some change of discovering the emergence of aspects of reality that we
> have just been assuming to be a priori given. Some examples of this are
> Penrose's "spin networks" and Reg Cahill's "Process physics".
>
>
>  to summarize, any entity that collaborate need memory of past
> interactions of each other entity , In other words, it needs individual
> recongnition ablities and a form of "moral evaluation" of each individual.
>
>
> I agree, but how do we treat the notion of memory such that an
> arbitrary entity has the capacity to access it? We humans have a large
> memory capacity that we carry around in our craniums...
>
>
>  It also needs to punish free riders even at the cost of its own well
> being, in a way that the net gain of free riders is negative. or else the
> fhe collaborators will fail and the defectors/free riders will expland.
>
>
> I suspect that free-riders will be, like the poor, always with us.
>
> We each one are free riders because we are selfish collaborators. A twist
on selfish collaboration is the self deception: our memory is unconsciously
distorted to support our case. we thinkl that we deserve more than the fair
share etc.

>
>  So the collaborators need to collaborate too  in the task of  punishing
> free riders because this is crucial for the stability of collaboration in
> other tasks.
>
>
> But there is a problem with this. There does not exist any finite and
> pre-given list of what defines a free rider!
>
> we all!. The christian analogy of fallen beings is pe

Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:

> I am not an expert in this field
>

There are no experts in this field because there is no field.

> but here is for example just a link to the university in Freiburg
> http://www.uni-freiburg.de/universitaet-en/fakultaeten-einrichtungenwhere you 
> see that the faculty of theology is there.

So the field of knowledge that theology deals with is the knowledge of the
hijinks going on with the faculty of of one department of the University of
Freiburg.

  John K Clark

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 7/12/2012 1:08 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012  Bruno Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:

> To reject *all* theologies, you need *a* theology.


Like "God" this is a example is somebody willing to abandon a idea but not a word; so 
"God" becomes "something more powerful than yourself" and now "theology" becomes "any 
field of study you think is important". If you unilaterally decree that words mean 
whatever you want them to mean then garbled communication is inevitable.


 John K Clark


I thought I would test Bruno's idea that theology is the study of what is fundamental.  In 
the Scottish Journal of Theology archives, which go back to 1899, a search for articles in 
which the word "fundamental" appears in the abstract or title, turns up one:


The Fundamental Shape of Old Testament Ethics (1971)

Search on "ontolog" produces two

A Trinitarian Ontology of Persons in Society (1994)

The Ontology of Tillih and Biblical Personalism (1962)


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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Then we should stop teaching Newtonian physics as well, since there are
> no new advances there either.
>

Not so. A hurricane simulation is pure Newtonian physics and yet they are
far far better now, that is to say they give us better understanding of the
storm, than they were 10 years ago or even 5. Theology on the other hand
was no good for anything 400 years ago and it's no good for anything today.

> > How about 'Anything that I deem unimportant should be eliminated.'? Do
> you detect any flaw in that reasoning?
>

No, if I feel something is unimportant I generally also feel it would be
wiser not to do it and make better use of my time doing something else.

  John K Clark

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 7/11/2012 6:47 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Matt Rydley "what is human" is a good introduction.

From: http://www.scribd.com/doc/47413560/69/MATT-RIDLEY

MATT RIDLEY

Science Writer; Founding chairman of the International Centre for Life; 
Author,F

rancis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
Collective intelligence
Brilliant people, be they anthropologists, psychologists or economists, 
assumethat brilliance is the key to human achievement. They vote for the 
cleverestpeople to run governments, they ask the cleverest experts to 
devise plans for theeconomy, they credit the cleverest scientists with 
discoveries, and they speculateon how human intelligence evolved in the 
first place.They are all barking up the wrong tree. The key to human 
achievement is notindividual intelligence at all. The reason human 
beings dominate the planet is notbecause they have big brains: 
Neanderthals had big brains but were just anotherkind of predatory ape. 
Evolving a 1200-cc brain and a lot of fancy software likelanguage was 
necessary but not sufficient for civilization. The reason someeconomies 
work better than others is certainly not because they have 
clevererpeople in charge, and the reason some places make great 
discoveries is notbecause they have smarter people.Human achievement is 
entirely a networking phenomenon. It is by putting brainstogether 
through the division of labor — through trade and specialisation — 
thathuman society stumbled upon a way to raise the living standards, 
carryingcapacity, technological virtuosity and knowledge base of the 
species. We can seethis in all sorts of phenomena: the correlation 
between technology and connectedpopulation size in Pacific islands; the 
collapse of technology in people who



95became isolated, like native Tasmanians; the success of trading city 
states inGreece, Italy, Holland and south-east Asia; the creative 
consequences of trade.Human achievement is based on collective 
intelligence — the nodes in the humanneural network are people 
themselves. By each doing one thing and getting goodat it, then sharing 
and combining the results through exchange, people becomecapable of 
doing things

they do not even understand
. As the economist LeonardRead observed in his essay "I, Pencil' (which 
I'd like everybody to read), nosingle person knows how to make even a 
pencil — the knowledge is distributedin society among many thousands of 
graphite miners, lumberjacks, designers andfactory workers.That's why, 
as Friedrich Hayek observed, central planning never worked: thecleverest 
person is no match for the collective brain at working out how 
todistribute consumer goods. The idea of bottom-up collective 
intelligence, whichAdam Smith understood and Charles Darwin echoed, and 
which Hayekexpounded in his remarkable essay "The use of knowledge in 
society", is one ideaI wish everybody had in their cognitive toolkit.


--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon


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Re: Cooperation and Free Riders


On 7/11/2012 6:47 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Stephen:

Well it愀 not cooperation between computer programs, but cooperation 
of entities in the abstract level. This can be described 
mathematically or simulated in a computer program. In both cases, it 
starts with a game with its rules  goals  wins and loses is created.


Hi Alberto,

OK, but can we think of the abstract level as the dual of a 
physical level where physical objects play out their scattering games? 
What is described by mathematics and/or simulated by computer program 
does not have to just be some abstraction. We cannot assume absolute 
closure and any implied externality is just semantics of the 
abstractions. Abstractions simply cannot exist as free floating 
entities, for this leads inevitably to contradictions.





If the game is simple and/or played by a small number of players (for 
example two) This game is analtyzed with Game Theory techniques to 
obtain the stable strategies that make each player to optimize its 
wins in a way that they can not win more and it is inmune to attacks 
from other players. This is a Nash equilibrium.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium


I understand and agree! My point is that equilibria to obtain, but 
we cannot substitute the abstract descriptions of games for the actual 
playing of the games. There is a duality involved that cannot be 
collapsed without stultifying both sides.




But when the game is too complex or the players use different 
strategies or they evolve and adapt, specially when the sucessful 
entities give birth to new generations with mutant and/or strategies 
which are a mix of the parents ones (in a way defined in the game) 
Then it is necessary to simulate it within an computer programs. This 
is part of the work of Axelrod. evolution of generations is modeled 
with a genetic program


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming


Yes! This is where we get into law of large numbers situations and 
have some change of discovering the emergence of aspects of reality that 
we have just been assuming to be a priori given. Some examples of this 
are Penrose's "spin networks" and Reg Cahill's "Process physics".




to summarize, any entity that collaborate need memory of past 
interactions of each other entity , In other words, it needs 
individual recongnition ablities and a form of "moral evaluation" of 
each individual.


I agree, but how do we treat the notion of memory such that an 
arbitrary entity has the capacity to access it? We humans have a large 
memory capacity that we carry around in our craniums...




It also needs to punish free riders even at the cost of its own well 
being, in a way that the net gain of free riders is negative. or else 
the fhe collaborators will fail and the defectors/free riders will 
expland.


I suspect that free-riders will be, like the poor, always with us.



So the collaborators need to collaborate too  in the task of 
 punishing free riders because this is crucial for the stability of 
collaboration in other tasks.


But there is a problem with this. There does not exist any finite 
and pre-given list of what defines a free rider!





Forgiveness is another requirement of collaboration, specially when 
the entities produce spurious behaviours of non collaboration, but 
collaborate most of the time. A premature punishment could make a 
collaborator to punish in response so the collaboration ends.


This rule is a form of pruning, so we can easily see what effects 
it has in networks of collaborators. It is an aspect of currying or 
concurrency.




In these games the goals are fixed.


This is only for the sake of closure, but closed systems have very 
short life spans, if any life at all. The trick is to get close to 
closure but not into it completely. Life exists as an exploitation of 
this possibility.


In more realistic games the goals vary and the means to obtain them 
depend on knowledge and asssumptions/beliefs, so an homogeneity within 
the group around both things should be required for collaboration.


Right!

For sure there is a tradeof between mind sharing and punishment. Less 
mind sharing, more violent punishment is necessary for a stable 
collaboration.


yes, but can you see how this rapidly suppresses any potential for 
further evolution. It is in effect the establishment of closure that 
seals off those involved. North Korea is a nice real world example of this.


To verify mind sharing and investment in the group collaboration, 
periodic public meetings where protocols/rituals of mutual recognition 
are repeated to assure to each member that the others are in-line. For 
example, to visit a temple each week, to discuss about the same 
newspaper or to assist to minoritary rock concerts. (or to mutually 
interchange checksums of the program content of each entity)


Certainly! This shows a rational for the "rituals" that we see as 
"traditions" in cultures, f

Re: Oh no!

On 7/12/2012 12:55 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Stephen P. King > wrote:

> I profoundly disagree. What was found was a curve when the raw data was
graphed in
a particular way. There is no proof that this curve is uniquely
representational of
some "particle".

The article certainly profoundly disagrees with your above statement:

"another equally likely option is that the data is evidence of a more exotic theory in
which the Higgs boson exists in several different forms. So the new particle might be
one of these, examples of these are a generic Higgs doublet or a triplet imposter. A
final option is based on the idea that particles can exist in mixtures. So the new data
does not show the Higgs but a mixture of it and some other particle."

All these possibilities would be much more exciting than just the discovery of the
vanilla Higgs, and the evidence that a new particle of some sort has been discovered is
just about as close to a "proof" as evidence EVER gets in physics which means the
evidence is excellent even if a bit less than Euclidean certainty. And if the particle
is not the Higgs that would mean it is the first unexpected particle discovered in the
last 40 years, which would new physics has been experimentally found, which would be huge.

Here's a nice graphic showing how the results relate to the SM higgs and to other more
interesting possibilities:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/07/boson-spotters-guide-helps-you.html

Brent

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 7/12/2012 12:28 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.07.2012 21:48 meekerdb said the following:

On 7/10/2012 12:38 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

Hence according to the authors, the M-theory governs absolutely
everything including social sciences. But I am afraid that this is
not what you would expect.


Why would you not expect a theory-of-everything to include the
behavior of people? Note that 'govern' does not imply 'predictable'.

Brent



What do you mean by 'govern' does not imply 'predictable'?


In chaos theory processes are not predictable although they are 'governed' by 
deterministic equations.  And quantum mechanics is 'governed' by unitary evolution in 
Hilbert space and the Born rule - but it's not even deterministic.  M-theory is a 
quantum-mechanical theory.  So to say that everything is 'governed' by M-theory doesn't 
tell you that everything is predictable.


Brent



Evgenii



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

On 7/12/2012 12:27 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 11.07.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following:

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

I understand but the question in principle still remains. Who
play the

chess, I or the M-theory?

There is no logical reason to think those two ways of explaining the
same phenomenon are incompatible. It's true that the reason a toy
balloon doesn't collapse is that the momentum of gas atoms inside the
balloon impacting the surface is greater than or equal to that of the
gas atoms outside the balloon impacting the surface, but it's also
true that the reason is just that the pressure inside is greater.
Sometimes humans find that a high level description and explanation
is more useful and sometimes they do not. Trying to understand how
hurricanes work by looking at the level of atoms would not be very
enlightening, and super-strings would be even less helpful.

John K Clark

I have read once Elbow Room by Dennett to understand how free will could be compatible
with determinism. Yet, I have not understood it. I have to work it out.

Evgenii

In Dennett's conception 'free will' is just a marker for responsibility; hence his
aphorism, "You can avoid responsibility for everything if you just make yourself small
enough." So where one person might say, "Yes, it was me. I did it." another might say, "I
didn't do it of my own free will. I was coerced by threats of being fired." and yet
another might say, "I didn't do it. It was just the result of deterministic or random
physical processes in my brain and body."

Brent

Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> To reject *all* theologies, you need *a* theology.
>

Like "God" this is a example is somebody willing to abandon a idea but not
a word; so "God" becomes "something more powerful than yourself" and now
"theology" becomes "any field of study you think is important". If you
unilaterally decree that words mean whatever you want them to mean then
garbled communication is inevitable.

 John K Clark

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Re: Oh no!


On 7/12/2012 3:36 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.07.2012 20:38 Stephen P. King said the following:

Say that it is not so!

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428428/higgs-boson-may-be-an-imposter-say-particle/?ref=rss 







Hi Stephen,

Recently I have read

Karin Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge

This is an ethnographic study of particle physicists and molecular 
biologists. You gonna like it.


I will search for couple of interesting quotes related to your link on 
the weekend.


Evgenii

Hi Evgenii,

I will look for it! Thank you for this recommendation. I am 
currently enjoying this: 
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/06/01/c-s-peirce-%E2%80%A2-on-the-definition-of-logic/




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Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon


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Re: Oh no!

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

>
> > I profoundly disagree. What was found was a curve when the raw data
> was graphed in a particular way. There is no proof that this curve is
> uniquely representational of some "particle".

The article certainly  profoundly disagrees with your above statement:

"another equally likely option is that the data is evidence of a more
exotic theory in which the Higgs boson exists in several different forms.
So the new particle might be one of these, examples of these are a generic
Higgs doublet or a triplet imposter. A final option is based on the idea
that particles can exist in mixtures. So the new data does not show the
Higgs but a mixture of it and some other particle."

All these possibilities would be much more exciting than just the discovery
of the vanilla Higgs, and the evidence that a new particle of some sort has
been discovered is just about as close to a "proof" as evidence EVER gets
in physics which means the evidence is excellent even if a bit less than
Euclidean certainty. And if the particle is not the Higgs that would mean
it is the first unexpected particle discovered in the last 40 years, which
would new physics has been experimentally found, which would be huge.

  John K Clark

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Re: esse est percipi?


On 7/12/2012 5:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 12 Jul 2012, at 02:39, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 7/11/2012 4:30 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/11/2012 7:32 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
In your work you seem to posit that numbers have minds (thus 
they can dream) and that their ideas are passive and yet can 
reproduce all phenomena that would be explained as being the result 
of physical acts in materialism. You argue that this reduces all 
phenomena to passive hypostatization, but I argue that this is a 
fallacy of misplaced concreteness as per the *fallacy of misplaced 
concreteness* 
, since you 
have severed all ties to physical implementation. Please understand 
that it seems that the only place where there is disagreement 
between you and I is on the postulation of primacy.  I am arguing 
that neither matter (atoms) nor ideas (numbers) can be taken as 
primitives as they are devoid of causal efficacy. 


But you are assuming that is some fact-of-the-matter as to where 
'concreteness' is placed. I think this is a mistake (a theological 
mistake).  The scientific attitude is to hypothesize whatever you 
want as the basic ontology and to see if the resulting model is 
consistent and predictive of the epistemological (subjective) 
facts.  So you may take tables and chair as basic objects 
interacting through gravity, electromagnetic, and contact forces - 
this is the model of Newtonian physics.  It obviously leaves out a 
lot and ultimately was found to be applicable only in a limited 
domain of its own ontology.  You may start with atoms of conscious 
thoughts (aka observer moments) and try to recover the 
intersubjective world from that.  And there is no proof known that 
would prohibit these different bases from making overlapping or even 
identical predictions.  There may be no *unique* basis.


Brent
--


If QM is correct then there is no *unique* basis! This is the 
"basis problem" of MWI rit large!


It seems to me that Everett shows convincingly that the "MW" does not 
depend on the basis, even if the partitioning of the mutliverse 
depends locally on the base used in some measurement. Then, once brain 
appears, they will defined some local relative base, but this does not 
change the universal wave, which will give the same observation for 
all possible observers, whatever base is used for the universal wave. 
There is no unique base, but physics, globally, does not depend on the 
choice of that base. A base choice is really like the choice of a map. 
Locally the base are defined by what we decide to measure, but of 
course "nature" has made the choice for us, and Brent mentions paper 
explaining how such fact is possible, and why the position base can be 
justified for measurement by entities of our type. The point is that 
such a justification can be made *in* any base chosen.


Bruno


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



Hi Bruno,

Umm, you are considering a different aspect of MWI and yet I think 
we agree here, as what you are pointing out is not a contradiction. The 
paper that Brent mentioned is quite good and I am taking into account 
there. The point that I am trying to make is that we cannot let a 
particular local situation lead us into thinking that the conditions 
that are true for the local conditions are true universally. I am trying 
to get more into the details of how " a justification can be made *in* 
any base chosen". This hints of an invariance that we can use to define 
the notion of Locality in more general and not problematic way.
My contention is that the "world" as perceived by an observer is a 
integral whole that contains no contradictions (that can be found in 
some finite time), this is just another way of arriving at the notion of 
an "Observer moment". This definition requires that we take into 
consideration the notion of physical resources that are available for 
computations to occur. In your scheme, resources play no role at all and 
thus my definition cannot be made.


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Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon

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Re: Oh no!


On 10.07.2012 20:38 Stephen P. King said the following:

Say that it is not so!

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428428/higgs-boson-may-be-an-imposter-say-particle/?ref=rss





Hi Stephen,

Recently I have read

Karin Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge

This is an ethnographic study of particle physicists and molecular 
biologists. You gonna like it.


I will search for couple of interesting quotes related to your link on 
the weekend.


Evgenii
--
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/tag/karin-knorr-cetina

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 10.07.2012 21:48 meekerdb said the following:

On 7/10/2012 12:38 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

Hence according to the authors, the M-theory governs absolutely
everything including social sciences. But I am afraid that this is
not what you would expect.


Why would you not expect a theory-of-everything to include the
behavior of people? Note that 'govern' does not imply 'predictable'.

Brent



What do you mean by 'govern' does not imply 'predictable'?

Evgenii

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 11.07.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following:

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012  Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:




I understand but the question in principle still remains. Who
play the

chess, I or the M-theory?



There is no logical reason to think those two ways of explaining the
same phenomenon are incompatible. It's true that the reason a toy
balloon doesn't collapse is that the momentum of gas atoms inside the
balloon impacting the surface is greater than or equal to that of the
gas atoms outside the balloon impacting the surface, but it's also
true that the reason is just that the pressure inside is greater.
Sometimes humans find that a high level description and explanation
is more useful and sometimes they do not. Trying to understand how
hurricanes work by looking at the level of atoms would not be very
enlightening, and super-strings would be even less helpful.

John K Clark



I have read once Elbow Room by Dennett to understand how free will could 
be compatible with determinism. Yet, I have not understood it. I have to 
work it out.


Evgenii

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 11.07.2012 18:26 John Clark said the following:

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012  Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:


It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is
determined by physical law



Does that mean you CAN imagine how free will can operate if our
behavior is NOT determined by physical law??!!

John K Clark


John,

Good point, indeed. I should confess that as soon as I start thinking of 
mathematics then I see no way to define a theory of free will. To this 
end, mathematics is no better than physics.


Well, the only reasonable idea in this respect that I have heard so far 
is to imagine some master equation that during its evolution in time 
will have several solutions at some times. I guess that one could 
construct such a function.


The theory of free will could be to be possible in human language though.

Evgenii













so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that
free will is just an illusion.”

Hence according to the authors, the M-theory governs absolutely
everything including social sciences. But I am afraid that this is
not what you would expect.

Evgenii --
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/07/**philosophy-is-dead.html





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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 11.07.2012 19:36 John Clark said the following:

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi
wrote:


In Germany theology still belongs to universities. What I like is
that you will find as a department of theoretical theology as well
as a department of practical theology.



I disagree, I don't like it. You are assuming that there exists a
organized field of knowledge called "theology", but I can not find
the slightest evidence that is in fact true.


I am not an expert in this field but here is for example just a link to 
the university in Freiburg


http://www.uni-freiburg.de/universitaet-en/fakultaeten-einrichtungen

where you see that the faculty of theology is there. You will find the 
same at other German universities.


Evgenii


Lawrence Krauss said
that it is his habit to ask every theologian he meets "what advances
in theology have been made in the last 400 years?", but he has never
received a straight answer from a single one of them, the best he has
gotten was "what do you mean by advances?". A expert in mathematics
or physics or biology or literature or ANY other field would not give
a weasel answer like that, they'd just rattle off a list of advances,
but not theology. He also said he was on a panel at a college and
somebody asked another scientist there why there is something rather
than nothing and the scientist said "that's a question to ask the
head of the theology department not me", but Krauss said "why ask him
rather than the college gardener or plumber or cook?". I have no
answer to Krauss's question because like him I think that where
theology is concerned there is no expertise and no field.

John K Clark



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

2012-07-12 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Wednesday, July 11, 2012 1:36:32 PM UTC-4, John K Clark wrote:
>
>
>
> I disagree, I don't like it. You are assuming that there exists a 
> organized field of knowledge called "theology", but I can not find the 
> slightest evidence that is in fact true. Lawrence Krauss said that it is 
> his habit to ask every theologian he meets "what advances in theology have 
> been made in the last 400 years?", but he has never received a straight 
> answer from a single one of them, the best he has gotten was "what do you 
> mean by advances?". A expert in mathematics or physics or biology or 
> literature or ANY other field would not give a weasel answer like that, 
> they'd just rattle off a list of advances, but not theology.
>

Then we should stop teaching Newtonian physics as well, since there are no 
new advances there either. 

How about 'Anything that I deem unimportant should be eliminated.'? Do you 
detect any flaw in that reasoning?

Craig

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Re: esse est percipi?



On 12 Jul 2012, at 11:34, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/12/2012 1:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 12 Jul 2012, at 00:30, John Mikes wrote:




On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


Esse is not percipi. With comp. Esse is more "is a solution to a  
diophantine polynomial equation".


St.:You have merely replaced the Atoms of the materialists with  
the Numbers of neo-Platonists. :_(

---
Study UDA and AUDA, it is exactly the contrary. Universal  
machines, relatively to the arithmetical truth makes the  
arithmetical reality into tuburlent unknowns. And matter still  
exists but is no more primitive as being the condition making  
collection of universal machines sharing part of the sheaves of  
all local computations.


UDA is an invitation, or challenge to tell me where you think  
there is a flaw, for UDA is the point that if we can survive with  
a digital brain, at some levels, then the physical reality is not  
the source of the reason why we believe in a physical reality. It  
is a reasoning Stephen, I repeated it recently on the FOAR list,  
please tell me a number between 0 and 7, or 8, so that we can  
agree on what we disagree on.


My question is (my) usual: how do you describe EXIST?
In my view whatever passes the mental royeaume DOES indeed exist.  
Not the physical world, not the "truth" ideas, ANYTHING. You  
escaped my earlier question about the "Nature" (or whatever  
anybody may call it/her) - this one is attached to it with your  
Latin caveat above exposing the questionable 'percipi' what I  
indeed included as valid for 'esse'.


Percipi might be valid for esse, but esse is not *just* percipi,  
like in Berkeley statement.


With comp, and the UDA conclusion things are rather clear. We have  
ontological existence, and this is given by the sandard meaning we  
can give to existential proposition, like Ex(x is a prime number).  
the "E" (it exists) is defined by axioms and inference rule.


So a number with a given property exists only if it can be proven to  
have that property from axioms by the inference rules?


Not at all. ExP(x) is true if it exists some n such that P(n) is true  
(provably or not).




Isn't that restrictive?


That would be.


I thought you extended "exist" to all x for which Ex(Px) whether  
provable or not.


I have perhaps been unclear. We must not confuse ExP(x), which  
operational meaning is defined by the axiom and rules of inference  
(telling us when ExP(x) is believed), but which truth might still be  
unprovable,  and the truth of ExP(x), which is the case when it exists  
some n such that P(n), and which is supposed to be independent of our  
ability to prove it or not, and which is actually independent of the  
axioms we chose.


Bruno

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



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

On 12 Jul 2012, at 11:25, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/12/2012 1:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 11 Jul 2012, at 23:39, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/11/2012 10:36 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi
wrote:

> In Germany theology still belongs to universities. What I like
is that you will find as a department of theoretical theology as
well as a department of practical theology.

I disagree, I don't like it. You are assuming that there exists a
organized field of knowledge called "theology", but I can not
find the slightest evidence that is in fact true. Lawrence Krauss
said that it is his habit to ask every theologian he meets "what
advances in theology have been made in the last 400 years?", but
he has never received a straight answer from a single one of
them, the best he has gotten was "what do you mean by advances?".
A expert in mathematics or physics or biology or literature or
ANY other field would not give a weasel answer like that, they'd
just rattle off a list of advances, but not theology. He also
said he was on a panel at a college and somebody asked another
scientist there why there is something rather than nothing and
the scientist said "that's a question to ask the head of the
theology department not me", but Krauss said "why ask him rather
than the college gardener or plumber or cook?". I have no answer
to Krauss's question because like him I think that where theology
is concerned there is no expertise and no field.

John K Clark

In fact one might say that IS the advance in theology over the
last 400yrs: It has no subject matter. Of course Bruno wants
"theology" to mean something different than any dictionary
definition.

What is the difference?
Cf:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology

Where's the similarity?

Theology is the study of the truth about us and varied entities. It is
concerned with possible deities, transcendental notions, wholeness,
possible afterlife, immortality, soul, person, conscience, and the
basic question like "who are we?", "what can we expect or hope, or
fear?", "is reincarnation possible", etc.
Historic theologies reflects humans prejudices, and some people in
some tradition will disqualify some or other tradition, but all in
all, theology is the science of the God(s) or what is supposed to be
outside us and might justify our existence.
Atheism can be seen as a theology, a bit like zero can be considered
as a number. The proposition "God does not exist" is a theological
proposition, for a logician. If not, we take the risk of confusing
theology with some particular human theologies, but this concerns more
history than science. And refusing to admit we do theology, when
betting on some reality, makes often scientific statements (beliefs)
into pseudo-theological statements (like if we knew the truth).

Bruno

Brent

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Re: esse est percipi?


On 7/12/2012 1:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 12 Jul 2012, at 00:30, John Mikes wrote:




On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Bruno Marchal > wrote:



*_Esse is not percipi_*. With comp. Esse is more "is a solution to a 
diophantine
polynomial equation".

/St.:You have merely replaced the Atoms of the materialists with the 
Numbers of
neo-Platonists. :_(/
---
Study UDA and AUDA, it is exactly the contrary. Universal machines, 
relatively to
the arithmetical truth makes the arithmetical reality into tuburlent 
unknowns. And
matter still exists but is no more primitive as being the condition making
collection of universal machines sharing part of the sheaves of all local 
computations.

UDA is an invitation, or challenge to tell me where you think there is a 
flaw, for
UDA is the point that if we can survive with a digital brain, at some 
levels, then
the physical reality is not the source of the reason why we believe in a 
physical
reality. It is a reasoning Stephen, I repeated it recently on the FOAR 
list, please
tell me a number between 0 and 7, or 8, so that we can agree on what we 
disagree on.

My question is (my) usual: how do you describe *_EXIST?_*
In my view whatever passes the mental royeaume DOES indeed exist. Not the physical 
world, not the "truth" ideas, ANYTHING. You escaped my earlier question about the 
"Nature" (or whatever anybody may call it/her) - this one is attached to it with your 
Latin caveat above exposing the questionable 'percipi' what I indeed included as valid 
for 'esse'.


Percipi might be valid for esse, but esse is not *just* percipi, like in 
Berkeley statement.

With comp, and the UDA conclusion things are rather clear. We have ontological 
existence, and this is given by the sandard meaning we can give to existential 
proposition, like Ex(x is a prime number). the "E" (it exists) is defined by axioms and 
inference rule.


So a number with a given property exists only if it can be proven to have that property 
from axioms by the inference rules?  Isn't that restrictive?  I thought you extended 
"exist" to all x for which Ex(Px) whether provable or not.


Brent

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead


On 7/12/2012 1:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 11 Jul 2012, at 23:39, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/11/2012 10:36 AM, John Clark wrote:



On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi > wrote:


> In Germany theology still belongs to universities. What I like is that 
you will
find as a department of theoretical theology as well as a department of 
practical
theology.


I disagree, I don't like it. You are assuming that there exists a organized field of 
knowledge called "theology", but I can not find the slightest evidence that is in fact 
true. Lawrence Krauss said that it is his habit to ask every theologian he meets "what 
advances in theology have been made in the last 400 years?", but he has never received 
a straight answer from a single one of them, the best he has gotten was "what do you 
mean by advances?". A expert in mathematics or physics or biology or literature or ANY 
other field would not give a weasel answer like that, they'd just rattle off a list of 
advances, but not theology. He also said he was on a panel at a college and somebody 
asked another scientist there why there is something rather than nothing and the 
scientist said "that's a question to ask the head of the theology department not me", 
but Krauss said "why ask him rather than the college gardener or plumber or cook?". I 
have no answer to Krauss's question because like him I think that where theology is 
concerned there is no expertise and no field.


  John K Clark


In fact one might say that IS the advance in theology over the last 400yrs: It has no 
subject matter.  Of course Bruno wants "theology" to mean something different than any 
dictionary definition.


What is the difference?
Cf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology


Where's the similarity?

Brent

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Re: esse est percipi?



On 12 Jul 2012, at 02:39, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 7/11/2012 4:30 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/11/2012 7:32 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:


In your work you seem to posit that numbers have minds (thus  
they can dream) and that their ideas are passive and yet can  
reproduce all phenomena that would be explained as being the  
result of physical acts in materialism. You argue that this  
reduces all phenomena to passive hypostatization, but I argue that  
this is a fallacy of misplaced concreteness as per the fallacy of  
misplaced concreteness, since you have severed all ties to  
physical implementation. Please understand that it seems that the  
only place where there is disagreement between you and I is on the  
postulation of primacy.  I am arguing that neither matter (atoms)  
nor ideas (numbers) can be taken as primitives as they are devoid  
of causal efficacy.


But you are assuming that is some fact-of-the-matter as to where  
'concreteness' is placed. I think this is a mistake (a theological  
mistake).  The scientific attitude is to hypothesize whatever you  
want as the basic ontology and to see if the resulting model is  
consistent and predictive of the epistemological (subjective)  
facts.  So you may take tables and chair as basic objects  
interacting through gravity, electromagnetic, and contact forces -  
this is the model of Newtonian physics.  It obviously leaves out a  
lot and ultimately was found to be applicable only in a limited  
domain of its own ontology.  You may start with atoms of conscious  
thoughts (aka observer moments) and try to recover the  
intersubjective world from that.  And there is no proof known that  
would prohibit these different bases from making overlapping or  
even identical predictions.  There may be no *unique* basis.


Brent
--


If QM is correct then there is no *unique* basis! This is the  
"basis problem" of MWI rit large!


It seems to me that Everett shows convincingly that the "MW" does not  
depend on the basis, even if the partitioning of the mutliverse  
depends locally on the base used in some measurement. Then, once brain  
appears, they will defined some local relative base, but this does not  
change the universal wave, which will give the same observation for  
all possible observers, whatever base is used for the universal wave.  
There is no unique base, but physics, globally, does not depend on the  
choice of that base. A base choice is really like the choice of a map.  
Locally the base are defined by what we decide to measure, but of  
course "nature" has made the choice for us, and Brent mentions paper  
explaining how such fact is possible, and why the position base can be  
justified for measurement by entities of our type. The point is that  
such a justification can be made *in* any base chosen.


Bruno


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



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead



On 12 Jul 2012, at 00:44, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/11/2012 2:22 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 11 Jul 2012, at 22:17, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/11/2012 6:23 AM, David Nyman wrote:


On 11 July 2012 09:55, Alberto G. Corona   
wrote:


Even the phisical TOE is part of this second world. there are no  
countries, no cars, no persons, no electrons outside of the   
world of the mind.  Outside of the mind there is only  
mathematics. And this math has been anthropically selected by the  
mind.


Well put.  Mind - the epistemological subject - is uniquely  
characterised by its irreducibly synthetic or compositional  
character, the reverse polarity of a maximally reduced,  
"objective" ontology.


But it isn't uniquely characterized by that.  I don't even know  
what "irreducibly synthetic" means.  I know what "synthetic"  
means; it means made (synthesized) of something else, it means  
artificial, not natural??  But in any case "the subject", the  
first-person, is also singular and persistent thru time.


There is certainly a tension between knowledge which is subjective  
and gained from perception and the model of the world based on it  
which is third-person communicable.  When we bestow the property  
"exists" on the ontology of the third-person world model, we then  
take on the task of explaining the first-person subjective in  
terms of that model.  Everyone on this list (except me) seems to  
assume this impossible.


Neither me. Just that if comp is true we got a simpler ontology.

This is just the flip side of Bruno's task of explaining the third- 
person world in terms of subjective knowledge


Not at all. I explain the *physical* world in term of first person  
plural world, themselves describe in third person arithmetic.


The 'first person plural world' is what I mean by knowledge on which  
there is intersubjective agreement.


OK. Those, when expressible, are belief, and if true (but we can't  
know that) they become knowledge (but not certainty).







Comp is not idealist.


Yes I understand that.  But doesn't it derive ideas (conscious  
thoughts) from computation (arithmetic) and the physical world from  
coherent subsets of ideas.


Consciousness is not really derived. It is only assumed to be  
associated with relevant computations. We derive from that, but that  
is not derived from less.










which he models by computational relations like "provable".


Provable = objective (doubtful) belief


Why do you writer "doubtful".  Why should one doubt what is  
provable?...because the axioms are dubious?


Yes. We cannot know that we are consistent, or correct.





Provable and true/satisfied-in-a-reality = Subjective knowledge  
(the communicable part).


But we can't know what is "satisfied-in-a-reality", we can only know  
what is provable from our premises


Making it into a belief. That might be wrong.




and what we experience directly.


That is true, and undoubtable.




Are you saying there are provable things that we can't communicate


As being proved, we can communicate them as belief, if we believe in  
the axioms.



or the there are provable things which are not true (not satisfied- 
in-a-reality)?


That can happen, even if nobody really doubt some simple theory, like  
arithmetic.


Bruno




Brent


(Incompleteness forces us to make those nuances).

Bruno



Brent

This is implicitly assumed by everyone, but explicitly  
acknowledged by hardly anybody.  Consequently the typical  
response whenever I express this thought is blank incomprehension.


David




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



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Re: esse est percipi?



On 12 Jul 2012, at 00:30, John Mikes wrote:




On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


Esse is not percipi. With comp. Esse is more "is a solution to a  
diophantine polynomial equation".


St.:You have merely replaced the Atoms of the materialists with the  
Numbers of neo-Platonists. :_(

---
Study UDA and AUDA, it is exactly the contrary. Universal machines,  
relatively to the arithmetical truth makes the arithmetical reality  
into tuburlent unknowns. And matter still exists but is no more  
primitive as being the condition making collection of universal  
machines sharing part of the sheaves of all local computations.


UDA is an invitation, or challenge to tell me where you think there  
is a flaw, for UDA is the point that if we can survive with a  
digital brain, at some levels, then the physical reality is not the  
source of the reason why we believe in a physical reality. It is a  
reasoning Stephen, I repeated it recently on the FOAR list, please  
tell me a number between 0 and 7, or 8, so that we can agree on what  
we disagree on.


My question is (my) usual: how do you describe EXIST?
In my view whatever passes the mental royeaume DOES indeed exist.  
Not the physical world, not the "truth" ideas, ANYTHING. You escaped  
my earlier question about the "Nature" (or whatever anybody may call  
it/her) - this one is attached to it with your Latin caveat above  
exposing the questionable 'percipi' what I indeed included as valid  
for 'esse'.


Percipi might be valid for esse, but esse is not *just* percipi, like  
in Berkeley statement.


With comp, and the UDA conclusion things are rather clear. We have  
ontological existence, and this is given by the sandard meaning we can  
give to existential proposition, like Ex(x is a prime number). the  
"E" (it exists) is defined by axioms and inference rule.
Then you have epistemological existence, which technically are modal  
variant of "E", like []Ex [] P(x), or similar constuction.




In the moment when the "infinite complexity" - the ever unknowable  
totality - comes into play, no 3rd c.AD equation can vouch for it  
with all the unknowable variants/qualia, beyond our 21.c.  
capabilities - many of them potentially factoring into the outcome  
of (polynomial, or not) arithmetically fitting equations in known  
numbers. Mathematics disallows (in number and qualia) unaccountable  
variants when it comes to equations (with potential solutions).


That depends on the theory. I do assume that an implementation of some  
computation makes it possible for a consciousness to manifest itself   
in some relative way. From this math can associate consciousness to  
what machine or number can discover by looking inward.





Also, when you feel the necesscity to include "arithmetic" with  
"TRUTH" then you confessed to the partial validity of it.


Why not?




How about the Not (SO?) arithmetic truth? deniable?



Not at all. It exists necessarily. Formal arithmetic is necessarily  
different from arithmetical truth, which is much vaster than anything  
believable by any humans, numbers or machines . But machines can know  
why it has to be like that if they are machines.


Keep in mind that I am working with the comp hypothesis.

Bruno

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



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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

On 11 Jul 2012, at 23:39, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/11/2012 10:36 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi
wrote:

> In Germany theology still belongs to universities. What I like is
that you will find as a department of theoretical theology as well
as a department of practical theology.

I disagree, I don't like it. You are assuming that there exists a
organized field of knowledge called "theology", but I can not find
the slightest evidence that is in fact true. Lawrence Krauss said
that it is his habit to ask every theologian he meets "what
advances in theology have been made in the last 400 years?", but he
has never received a straight answer from a single one of them, the
best he has gotten was "what do you mean by advances?". A expert in
mathematics or physics or biology or literature or ANY other field
would not give a weasel answer like that, they'd just rattle off a
list of advances, but not theology. He also said he was on a panel
at a college and somebody asked another scientist there why there
is something rather than nothing and the scientist said "that's a
question to ask the head of the theology department not me", but
Krauss said "why ask him rather than the college gardener or
plumber or cook?". I have no answer to Krauss's question because
like him I think that where theology is concerned there is no
expertise and no field.

John K Clark

In fact one might say that IS the advance in theology over the last
400yrs: It has no subject matter. Of course Bruno wants "theology"
to mean something different than any dictionary definition.

What is the difference?
Cf:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Oh no!