Re: Thorium!
On 9/15/2012 10:13 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: I like this conversation! I am interested in the materials required for the vessel and the plumbing. Some kind of ceramic coated titanium or zirconium? Alumina reinforced steel http://sbir.gsfc.nasa.gov/SBIR/abstracts/09/sbir/phase1/SBIR-09-1-A2.09-8630.html? I think most reactors using Hastelloy plumbing (one of several nickel alloys). The containment vessels are steel and concrete. They differ a lot depending on whether they are pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, sodium cooled,... One advantage of molten-salt reactors is that they aren't pressurized. Brent -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
On 15.09.2012 21:56 meekerdb said the following: On 9/15/2012 9:35 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/15/2012 4:11 AM, Russell Standish wrote: ... Hi Russell, That is far too inclusive a definition of computation. Not really, it only requires some way of representing the information such that it can be transformed. The integers are not the only kind of number that we can represent numbers (or any other mathematical object) with. IMHO, we are naive to think that Nature is hobbled to only use integers to perform her Computations. We must never project our deficiencies on Nature. I would go even farther than Russell implies. A lot of the muddle about computation and consciousness comes about because they are abstracted out of the world. That's why I like to think in terms of robots or Mars rovers. Consciousness and computation are given their meaning by their effecting actions in the world. To find out what a string of 1s and 0s means a Mars rovers memory you need to see what effect they have on its actions. You know that 1+1=10 means 1+1=2 when 10 in a register causes it to pick up two rocks. So to further abstract computation to mean transformation of information will lead to even more of a muddle. Brent So this is some kind of enactive model of consciousness, similar to what Alva Noë writes in Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. One question in this respect. Let me start with a quote from Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness Section Can qualia be reduced to the exercise of sensory-motor skills? p. 102 “Piloting a 747 no doubt feels like something to a human pilot, and the way that it feels is likely to have something to do with human biology. But why should it feel the same way to an electronic autopilot that replaces the skills exercised by a human being? Or why should it feel like anything to be the control system of a guided missile system? Anyone versed in the construction of electronic control systems knows that if one builds a system in the right way, it will function just as it is intended to do, whether it feels like anything to be that system or not. If so, functioning in an electronic (or any other) system is logically tangential to whether it is like anything to be that system, leaving the hard problem of why it happens to feel a certain way in humans untouched.” Do you mean that the meaning in a guided missile system happens as by-product of its development by engineers? To me, it seems that meaning that you have defined in Mars Rovers is yet another theory of epiphenomenalism. Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/06/visual-world-a-grand-illusion.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: The poverty of computers
Hi Bruno Marchal All love, all truth, all beauty necessarily comes from God (Platonia's All). So if you can feel any of those, there's your experience. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 12:47:02 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 15 Sep 2012, at 13:08, Roger Clough wrote: Hi John Clark Theology was once called the queen of the sciences, but that was just a power rating. Theology is not a science, it's closer to but different than philosophy in that theology is, or should be, based on scripture. God's teachings, not man's. I guess that it is here that we might disagree the more. Theology, like everything else, should rely only to the experience, and then logic, theories, etc. The experience can be helped by practice, meditation, prayer, plants, walking in woods and mountains, surfing the ocean, looking at Hubble picture, or doing jazz, and some Church can help a lot, when they handle magically the sun light. Humans are known to write a lot of things, so scripture, as inspiring they can be, should never taken literally, nor ever too much seriously. Most religion agree that God is not human conceivable, and that is why we can be deluded in recognizing sign, so that it is better to trust God for teaching Itself to the others, and not intervene too much on that plane. Cautious. If not you are, willingly or unwillingly, imposing your conception of reality to the other. Truth is a goddess which does not need any army to win. Philosophy deals with belief and reason, You mean science? OK. moreorless. Theology deals with faith and scripture. Theology deals with our relation with the big thing. Faith is a universal gift, but scriptures, when taken too much literally, or too much repeated, can kill the original faith that we have all. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
Hi Craig Weinberg Yes, such chicanery goes on, because men are no angels. But it has to be even worse is a socialist economy, where market forces (which tend to keep men more honest) are replaced by the biased wills of bureaucrats and politicians. I'd choose the market economy myself. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 20:32:34 Subject: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else out. Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant conflicts of interest. At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the market. The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin. Craig On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to others. Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources like this. The problem in the actual situation is that the narrow selfishness that is being promoted in the modern society is not only dysfunctional at the social level, because it also makes necessary the externalization of the compassion away from the individual, because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom as absence of obligations. Not only that, because it is also dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy. 2012/9/14 Roger Clough : Hi Craig Weinberg Fortunately or unfortunately, capitalism is Darwinism, pure and simple. So it can prepare for a better future, although it can be painful at present. My own take on this is that there needs to be a calculus of pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham suggested perhaps an impfect one. In lieu of that, I am all for food stamps and safety nets. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function.
Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
Hi John Clark oger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 16:28:02 Subject: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible days). Well, they certainly behaved as the didn't know what it meant to be intelligent, but then why is the bible worth reading today? Why not read something with a little more intellectual meat on its bones, like a Donald Duck comic book? To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child, And there can be no better place for a child to start reading the Bible than And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend; stories about how God likes to force people to eat their children and friends makes such charming bedtime stories. ? God did order a few massacres. But only a *few* massacres, and hey God is just like the rest of us, He sometimes does things He will regret when He gets into a hissy fit. I mean we all have bad days. Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish laws in leviticus and numbers. I will say this, the God of the Old testament may be the most unpleasant character in all of fiction and He may have enjoyed forced cannibalism and torture but at least once you were dead you were dead and He was finished playing with you; but not so in the New Testament of Jesus the Prince of Peace, Jesus is going to use all His skill to torture you as horribly as He can for all of eternity if you take just one step out of line. ? Jesus did away with them. So you look at Jesus as a mass murderer who has reformed, or says He has. The forgiveness of Jesus also did away with the need for them. The Old Testament is the problem. The New Testament is the solution. Christ was a jerk. I refer to the character portrayed in the bible, whether there really was a historic figure who impressed the rubes with card tricks and other stunts I don't know. Personally I'd be a lot more impressed if he had taught us about the second law of thermodynamics rather than hear a report of questionable accuracy about some water into wine trick. It took the human race another 1800 years to learn about entropy and although it teaches us nothing about morality neither do Christ's stunts, and unlike the fermented grape juice bit you can't fake thermodynamics. Christ was a nut, nutty as a fruit cake, or to put it in more politically correct language, he had a mental illness that produced delusions of grandeur. I don't think it was an act, I think he really thought he was God. Christ was a martinet. His words You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell sounds more like a typical flame you can find anywhere on the net then it does the wisdom of a great sage. Buddha, Lao-tse, and Socrates all had a much more enlightened attitude toward those who disagreed with them, and they had it 500 years before Jesus. Christ was a creep. He believed in hell, he talked with glee about wailing and gnashing of teeth and these shall go away into everlasting fire. He thought that torturing somebody, not for a billion years, not for a trillion years but for an INFINITE number of years would be an amusing thing to do to somebody he didn't like. I think cruelty on this monstrous scale proves that Jesus Christ of the bible is morally indistinguishable from Satan of the bible. Christ was a idiot. He believed that God, that is to say himself, was furious with the human race (something to do with fruit trees) and even though he could do anything the only way for him to forgive the humans would be for the humans to torture him to death, even though being a god he can not die. Does any of this seem very smart to you?? ?ohn 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
Hi John Clark On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Roger Clough wrote: ROGER: Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible days). JOHN: Welll, they certainly behaved as the didn't know what it meant to be intelligent, but then why is the bible worth reading today? Why not read something with a little more intellectual meat on its bones, like a Donald Duck comic book? ROGER: To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child, JOHN: And there can be no better place for a child to start reading the Bible than And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend; stories about how God likes to force people to eat their children and friends makes such charming bedtime stories. ROGER: That's from Jeremiah 19. Jeremiah was a prophet, preaching fire and brimstone to the people. ROGER: ? God did order a few massacres. JOHN: But only a *few* massacres, and hey God is just like the rest of us, He sometimes does things He will regret when He gets into a hissy fit. I mean we all have bad days. ROGER: God loved the Israelites and hated their enemies. Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish laws in leviticus and numbers. JOHN: I will say this, the God of the Old testament may be the most unpleasant character in all of fiction and He may have enjoyed forced cannibalism and torture but at least once you were dead you were dead and He was finished playing with you; but not so in the New Testament of Jesus the Prince of Peace, Jesus is going to use all His skill to torture you as horribly as He can for all of eternity if you take just one step out of line. ROGER: God did heap down fire and brimstone on the enemies of his people. ? Jesus did away with them (the fire and brimstone). JOHN: So you look at Jesus as a mass murderer who has reformed, or says He has. ROGER: God and Jesus are two different people, although paradoxically both are parts of the trinity. The forgiveness of Jesus also did away with the need for them. The Old Testament is the problem. The New Testament is the solution. JOHN: Christ was a jerk. I refer to the character portrayed in the bible, whether there really was a historic figure who impressed the rubes with card tricks and other stunts I don't know. Personally I'd be a lot more impressed if he had taught us about the second law of thermodynamics rather than hear a report of questionable accuracy about some water into wine trick. It took the human race another 1800 years to learn about entropy and although it teaches us nothing about morality neither do Christ's stunts, and unlike the fermented grape juice bit you can't fake thermodynamics. Christ was a nut, nutty as a fruit cake, or to put it in more politically correct language, he had a mental illness that produced delusions of grandeur. I don't think it was an act, I think he really thought he was God. Christ was a martinet. His words You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell sounds more like a typical flame you can find anywhere on the net then it does the wisdom of a great sage. Buddha, Lao-tse, and Socrates all had a much more enlightened attitude toward those who disagreed with them, and they had it 500 years before Jesus. Christ was a creep. He believed in hell, he talked with glee about wailing and gnashing of teeth and these shall go away into everlasting fire. He thought that torturing somebody, not for a billion years, not for a trillion years but for an INFINITE number of years would be an amusing thing to do to somebody he didn't like. I think cruelty on this monstrous scale proves that Jesus Christ of the bible is morally indistinguishable from Satan of the bible. Christ was a idiot. He believed that God, that is to say himself, was furious with the human race (something to do with fruit trees) and even though he could do anything the only way for him to forgive the humans would be for the humans to torture him to death, even though being a god he can not die. Does any of this seem very smart to you?? ?ohn K ClarK ROGER: Jesus' bark was much worse than his bite. He was angry at sinners and sin, as you might expect him to be. But He died for them -- and us as well -- at Golgotha. The meaning of anything in the Bible has to be considered against the context of the Bible as a whole. God's wrath was for sinners and enemies of Israel, but in the New Twestament, much of his wrath was replaced by grace. -- 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. For more options, visit this group at
Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Stephen P. King Now I see your problem with Chalmers. It seems to be too sweeping a remark, but Leibniz would agree. because God, who is the supreme monad, causes all to happen. Mind is the ruling power. As I say below, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:04:41 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/15/2012 8:52 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King I seem to have-- whoops-- totally misread him. Logical dyslexia ? Hi Roger, Good catch! Yeah, my dyslexia distorts things in a weird telephone game way... His first sentence is correct: Conscious experience is an expression of nonphysical mind OK, but I agree with that remark. It is the idea that all that exists is the possible expressions of nonphysical mind that I find to be deeply flawed. I don't follow the rest of your comments. Berkeley's solipsism has never been disproven, as far as I know. The inability for Berkeley and those to support his thesis to answer to Mr. Johnson's retort of bounding his foot off of a rock was the evidence of the flaw. A thesis that makes a deed ontological statement, such as Immaterials does with its thesis that: all that exists is the possible expressions of nonphysical mind, need to be able to explain the causal relationships of that which it claims is merely epiphenomena, as such can have (by definition) no causal efficacy whatsoever. The fact that I experience a world that is not directly maleable to my whim is a pretty good indication that it is not just the case all that exists is the possible expressions of nonphysical mind since I have what very much appears to be a nonphysical mind. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-14, 12:09:25 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/14/2012 7:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg His very first sentence is wrong. Conscious experience is an expression of nonphysical mind, although it may deal with physical topics. It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. Dear Roger, No, you misunderstand his argument. If Conscious experience is an expression of nonphysical mind in a strict nothing but sense then consciousness would be completely solipsistic and incapable of even comprehending that it is not all that exists. It is because consciousness is contained to be Boolean representable (and thus finite!) that it can bet on its incompleteness and thus go beyond itself, escaping its solipsism. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-13, 15:03:13 Subject: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment If anyone is not familiar with David Chalmers Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia You should have a look at it first. This thought experiment is intended to generalize principles common to both computationalism and functionalism so that the often confusing objections surrounding their assumptions can be revealed. Say that we have the technology to scan the city of New York by means of releasing 100,000 specially fitted cats into the streets, which will return to the laboratory in a week's time with a fantastically large amount of data about what the cats see and feel, smell and taste, hear, their positions and movements relative to each other, etc. We now set about computing algorithms to simulate the functions of Brooklyn such that we can tear down Brooklyn completely and replace it with a simulation which causes cats released into the simulated environment to behave in the same way as they would have according to the history of their initial release. Indeed, cats in Manhattan travel to and from Brooklyn as usual. Perhaps to get this right, we had to take all of Brooklyn and grind it up in a giant blender until it becomes a paste of liquified corpses, garbage, concrete, wood, and glass, and then use this substrate to mold into objects that can be moved around remotely to suit the expectations of the cats. Armed with the confidence of the feline thumbs-up, we go ahead and replace Manhattan and the other boroughs in the same way, effectively turning a city of millions into a cat-friendly cemetery. While the experiment is not a PR success (Luddites and Fundamentalists complain loudly about a
Re: Re: The poverty of computers
Hi Stephen P. King Not sure I understand your objection, but faith, being subjective (hence personal) is at least to first order principally in one individual. At the same time, however, since Mind is nonlocal, there has to be some spillover from other minds of like thinking. According to the monadology, also, an individual with his perceptions has a limited ability to see into the future. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:15:26 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/15/2012 8:57 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Faith is merely trust. I could have faith in a doorknob. But I wouldn't try faith in Satan. Even the doorknob would work to some extent, for trust opens you up to authority, to submission, and submission is the meat and potatoes of salvation. It's the bending over that does the work. In the case of salvation, bending over to Jesus. Hi Roger, I do not wish to sink into Scholastic style arguments, but I am trying to make a point here. Faith must be anticipatory or it is not capable of being knowledge of things unseen. If I where the one entity in the universe then it would not make any sense to confine knowledge of things not seem to a future tensed domain as anything that is beyond my direct reach would be in the domain defined by the not seen, but we appear to live in a universe where I can communicate with the fellow around the corner with a radio and he can tell me all about that is happening beyond my local reach. Thus if we are trying to be logically consistent in our definitions, we have to restrict the domain of Faith to the common future of any that I might be able to communicate with; not seen means not seen to anyone that I can communicate with, no? =-O Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-14, 12:11:35 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/14/2012 7:09 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Faith can be expressed as a belief, but faith itself is inner trust, confidence, etc. Faith Noun:Complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Dear Roger, But not just anything it is contained to cover only that which is possible in the future. Faith is forward projected belief. I have faith that the bridge can support my weight because it is possible to falsify that belief when I am actually crossing it.. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-13, 13:21:50 Subject: Re: Re: The poverty of computers On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:43:39 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal The shared part of religion (or science) is called belief(s). They are exclusively in the fom of words. For example words from the Bible, and the Creeds. The personal or private part of religion is called faith. It is not belief, for it is wordless, is more like trust or motivation. Religion trusts its creeds, science trust the laws of physics etc. It sounds like you are talking about the particular forms of religion though. In some other traditions, faith can be the public proclamation in words and belief is the privately expressed as wordless. Craig -- -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
Hi Stephen P. King Leibniz was not a solipsist, since he took it for granted that the world out there was actually there. If a tree fell in a forest and nobody heard it, it still would have fallen. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:29:01 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers On 9/15/2012 9:12 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King And then there is Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles, identity there meaning that you only need one of them, throw the rest away. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Hi Roger, Yes but! We have to solve the other minds problem or be content to simmer in our solipsist state of being. This requires something external to the singleton sets of objects. We need to have room to make copies of that would be otherwise identical objects. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
Hi Stephen P. King The other minds problem (How do I know that there are other minds ?) is indeed an impossible to crack nut if you are a solipsist. So solipsim is perhaps the only philiosophy impossible to disprove. Or prove, I think. Leibniz was not a solipsist. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:29:01 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers On 9/15/2012 9:12 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King And then there is Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles, identity there meaning that you only need one of them, throw the rest away. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Hi Roger, Yes but! We have to solve the other minds problem or be content to simmer in our solipsist state of being. This requires something external to the singleton sets of objects. We need to have room to make copies of that would be otherwise identical objects. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Saturday, September 15, 2012 6:21:14 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: What you think third party observable behavior means is the set of all properties which are externally discoverable. I am saying that is a projection of naive realism, and that in reality, there is no such set, and that in fact the process of discovery of any properties supervenes on the properties of all participants and the methods of their interaction. Of course there is a set of all properties that are externally discoverable, even if you think this set is very small! No, there isn't. That is what I am telling you. Nothing exists outside of experience, which is creating new properties all of the time. There is no set at all. There is no such thing as a generic externality...each exterior is only a reflection of the interior of the system which discovers the interior of other systems as exteriors. Moreover, this set has subsets, and we can limit our discussion to these subsets. For example, if we are interested only in mass, we can simulate a human perfectly using the right number of rocks. Even someone who believes in an immortal soul would agree with this. No, I don't agree with it at all. You are eating the menu. A quantity of mass doesn't simulate anything except in your mind. Mass is a normative abstraction which we apply in comparing physical bodies with each other. To reduce a human being to a physical body is not a simulation is it only weighing a bag of organic molecules. My point of using cats in this thought experiment is to specifically point out our naivete in assuming that instruments which extend our perception in only the most deterministic and easy to control ways are sufficient to define a 'third person'. If we look at the brain with a microscope, we see those parts of the brain that microscopes can see. If we look at New York with a swarm of cats, then we see the parts of New York that cats can see. Yes, but there are properties of the brain that may not be relevant to behaviour. Which properties are in fact important is determined by experiment. For example, we may replace the myelin sheath with a synthetic material that has similar electrical properties and then test an isolated nerve to see if action potentials propagate in the same way. If they do, then the next step is to incorporate the nerve in a network and see if the pattern of firing in the network looks normal. The step after that is to replace the myelin in the brain of a rat to see if the animal's behaviour changes. The modified rats are compared to unmodified rats by a blinded researcher to see if he can tell the difference. If no-one can consistently tell the difference then it is announced that the synthetic myelin appears to be a functionally identical substitute for natural myelin. Except it isn't identical. No imitation substance is identical to the original. Sooner or later the limits of the imitation will be found - or they could be advantages. Maybe the imitation myelin prevents brain cancer or heat stroke or something, but it also maybe prevents sensation in cold weather or maybe certain amino acids now cause Parkinson's disease. There is no such thing as identical. There is only 'seems identical from this measure at this time'. As is the nature of science, another team of researchers may then find some deficit in the behaviour of the modified rats under conditions the first team did not examine. Scientists then make modifications to the formula of the synthetic myelin and do the experiments again. Which is great for medicine (although ultimately maybe unsustainably expensive), but it has nothing to do with the assumption of identical structure and the hard problem of consciousness. There is no such thing as identical experience. I have suggested that in fact we can perhaps define consciousness as that which has never been repeated. It is the antithesis of that which can be repeated, (hence the experience of now), even though experiences themselves can seem very repetitive. The only seem so from the vantage point of a completely novel moment of consideration of the memories of previous iterations. This is the point of the thought experiment. The limitations of all forms of measurement and perception preclude all possibility of there ever being a such thing as an exhaustively complete set of third person behaviors of any system. What is it that you don't think I understand? What you don't understand is that an exhaustively complete set of behaviours is not required. Yes, it is. Not for prosthetic enhancements, or repairs to a nervous system, but to replace a nervous system without replacing the person who is using it, yes, there is no set of behaviors which can ever be exhaustive
Re: Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
Hi Stephen P. King Yes, unless the hockey stick data is true, we are on the verge of another ice age-- plus or minus 10,000 years. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:36:21 Subject: Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years On 9/15/2012 9:29 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Fig.2. Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core from the Antarctica (Petit et al. 2001). The record spans over four glacial periods and five interglacials, including the present. The horizontal line indicates the modern temperature. The red square to the right indicates the time interval shown in greater detail in the following figure. The diagram above (Fig.2) shows a reconstruction of global temperature based on ice core analysis from the Antarctica. The present interglacial period (the Holocene) is seen to the right (red square). The preceding four interglacials are seen at about 125,000, 280,000, 325,000 and 415,000 years before now, with much longer glacial periods in between. All four previous interglacials are seen to be warmer (1-3oC) than the present. The typical length of a glacial period is about 100,000 years, while an interglacial period typical lasts for about 10-15,000 years. The present interglacial period has now lasted about 11,600 years. According to ice core analysis, the atmospheric CO2 concentrations during all four prior interglacials never rose above approximately 290 ppm; whereas the atmospheric CO2 concentration today stands at nearly 390 ppm. T he present interglacial is about 2oC colder than the previous interglacial, even though the atmospheric CO2 concentration now is about 100 ppm higher. -- Hi, Does not this graph strongly suggests a secular periodicity to global climate variation? If I am reading the graph correctly, we are overdue for a glaciation event. Maybe anthropogenic CO2 is just Nature's way of forestalling the immanent ice age so that Humanity might evolve beyond the bounds of this planet's surface. This thought leads me to believe that all that are overly concerned with damping human activity are anti-human evolution and we can see this directly in the real world consequences of their policy dictates. All of the plans that have been advanced to suppress anthropogenic CO2 are repressive to the human condition. Let us return to the Stone age we are told by the elites that are soo worried about the impending doom of global warming. Are you insane?, I reply. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: The poverty of computers
Hi Stephen P. King My take on the meaning of knowledge of things unseen is knowledge of what is invisible at the moment. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:15:26 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/15/2012 8:57 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Faith is merely trust. I could have faith in a doorknob. But I wouldn't try faith in Satan. Even the doorknob would work to some extent, for trust opens you up to authority, to submission, and submission is the meat and potatoes of salvation. It's the bending over that does the work. In the case of salvation, bending over to Jesus. Hi Roger, I do not wish to sink into Scholastic style arguments, but I am trying to make a point here. Faith must be anticipatory or it is not capable of being knowledge of things unseen. If I where the one entity in the universe then it would not make any sense to confine knowledge of things not seem to a future tensed domain as anything that is beyond my direct reach would be in the domain defined by the not seen, but we appear to live in a universe where I can communicate with the fellow around the corner with a radio and he can tell me all about that is happening beyond my local reach. Thus if we are trying to be logically consistent in our definitions, we have to restrict the domain of Faith to the common future of any that I might be able to communicate with; not seen means not seen to anyone that I can communicate with, no? =-O Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-14, 12:11:35 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/14/2012 7:09 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Faith can be expressed as a belief, but faith itself is inner trust, confidence, etc. Faith Noun:Complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Dear Roger, But not just anything it is contained to cover only that which is possible in the future. Faith is forward projected belief. I have faith that the bridge can support my weight because it is possible to falsify that belief when I am actually crossing it.. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-13, 13:21:50 Subject: Re: Re: The poverty of computers On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:43:39 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal The shared part of religion (or science) is called belief(s). They are exclusively in the fom of words. For example words from the Bible, and the Creeds. The personal or private part of religion is called faith. It is not belief, for it is wordless, is more like trust or motivation. Religion trusts its creeds, science trust the laws of physics etc. It sounds like you are talking about the particular forms of religion though. In some other traditions, faith can be the public proclamation in words and belief is the privately expressed as wordless. Craig -- -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: science only works with half a brain
Hi Stephen P. King Mereology seems to be something like Spinoza's metaphysics, that there is just one stuff in the universe and that stuff is God. So there is just one material. Leibniz is completely diffferent. Every substance is not only different, it keeps changing, and changing more than its shape, and is a reflection of the whole universe. The changing and the different aspects means Leibniz is non-materialistic. And all of my comments could have been said by Leibniz. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:19:40 Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain Hi Roger, You might think that you are being consistent with an anti-materialist stance, but consider how your wordings appear to use the exact mereological relations that are required for a materialist ontology. A mereology is a scheme of relations between wholes and parts, it is what defines the primitives that we build our set theories from. See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/ I don't have time to show my claim at this time, I apologize. But if you have a moment, please take a look at the article and ponder the implications of it. On 9/15/2012 9:00 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King My stance there is absolutely anti-materialist. Where do you see a materialistic statement ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-14, 12:40:45 Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain On 9/14/2012 8:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Objective things are things that can be measured (are extended) and so are quantitative. Numbers can apply. Science applies. Computers can deal with them. Subjective things are inextended and so cannot be measured directly, at least, nor dealt with by computers at least directly. I think a more practical division would be the body/mind split. Perhaps set theory might work, I don't understand it. Dear Roger, You are assuming an exclusively materialist stance or paradigm in your comment. Bruno's ideas are against the very idea. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-14, 04:09:27 Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain On 13 Sep 2012, at 13:17, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal and meekerdb, ROGER: Hi meekerdb First, science can only work with quantity, not quality, so it only works with half a brain. MEEKERDB [actually it is BRUNO]: Bad decision. You are the one cutting the corpus callosum here. ROGER: You have to. Quantity is an objective measure, quality is a subjective measure. Apples and oranges. You are too much categorical. Qualities can have objective features too. Modal logic, and other non standard logic are invented for that purposes. Geometry and topology can have non quantitative features, also. Secondly, meaning is not a scientific category. Model theory studies a form of meaning. If you decide that something is not scientific, you make it non scientific. So science can neither make nor understand meaningful statements. Logic has the same fatal problem. Only if you decide so. BRUNO ?: Not at all. Logic handle both syntactical or digital transformations, and its dual the corresponding semantical adjoint transformation. There is proof theory and model theory. Meaning is handle by non syntactical mathematical structures. There are many branches in logic, and semantic, alias Model Theory, is one of them. ROGER: Those are all tools for working with objective data such as numbers or written words. Not at all. Model studies infinite structure, some of them have no syntactical or finite counterparts. Then what do you do with subjective data ? Obviously you must throw it out. On the contrary, even with just the UDA, consciousness is the basic notion at the base of the whole reasoning (which annoys of course those who want to keep it under the rug). You are either a bit unfair, or ignorant of the UDA. Its role consists in showing that the subjective data and the 3p stuff are not easily reconciled with comp, as we must explain the physical 3p, from coherence condition on the subjective experience related to computations. BRUNO To separate science from religion looks nice, but it consists in
Re: Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
Hi Stephen P. King I ALSO THINK WE SHOULD LOOK INTO THORIUM REACTORS BUT THERE ARE MANY DOUBTERS (CERTAINLY GREENIES AMONG THEM) THAT THEY WOULD WORK. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 16:55:58 Subject: Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years On 9/15/2012 4:11 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/15/2012 10:36 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/15/2012 9:29 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Fig.2. Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core from the Antarctica (Petit et al. 2001). The record spans over four glacial periods and five interglacials, including the present. The horizontal line indicates the modern temperature. The red square to the right indicates the time interval shown in greater detail in the following figure. The diagram above (Fig.2) shows a reconstruction of global temperature based on ice core analysis from the Antarctica. The present interglacial period (the Holocene) is seen to the right (red square). The preceding four interglacials are seen at about 125,000, 280,000, 325,000 and 415,000 years before now, with much longer glacial periods in between. All four previous interglacials are seen to be warmer (1-3oC) than the present. The typical length of a glacial period is about 100,000 years, while an interglacial period typical lasts for about 10-15,000 years. The present interglacial period has now lasted about 11,600 years. According to ice core analysis, the atmospheric CO2 concentrations during all four prior interglacials never rose above approximately 290 ppm; whereas the atmospheric CO2 concentration today stands at nearly 390 ppm. T he present interglacial is about 2oC colder than the previous interglacial, even though the atmospheric CO2 concentration now is about 100 ppm higher. -- Hi, Does not this graph strongly suggests a secular periodicity Milankovich cycles. But in the present case there is no mystery about where the CO2 comes from and whether it's a natural cycle - it's us. to global climate variation? If I am reading the graph correctly, we are overdue for a glaciation event. Maybe anthropogenic CO2 is just Nature's way of forestalling the immanent ice age so that Humanity might evolve beyond the bounds of this planet's surface. Nature acting by magic, i.e. supernaturally!? This thought leads me to believe that all that are overly concerned with damping human activity are anti-human evolution and we can see this directly in the real world consequences of their policy dictates. All of the plans that have been advanced to suppress anthropogenic CO2 are repressive to the human condition. Let us return to the Stone age we are told by the elites that are soo worried about the impending doom of global warming. Are you insane?, I reply. I'm giving a talk Monday on why we should be building molten-salt thorium reactors to replace the burning of fossil fuels for electrical power. Brent -- I strongly support that project! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: US elections
On 15 Sep 2012, at 22:32, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Sep 11, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: I know this might be an impossible dream, but could we keep the list clear of parochial US election discussion, as it is clearly off- topic. How could anything be off topic on the everything list? LOL Of course, on the everything-list we discuss about the search for a theory of everything, which is a very *particular* thing. Some things can be invoked, only if it seems to be a counter-example to a TOE proposal. It is doubtful we found a theory explaining all observable forces, from gravitation to love, which would be contradicted by the US election. Russell Standish was correct. US election are out of topic. Oh! You can use US election and international cannabis prohibition as illustrating a giant innumeracy: a lack in elementary logic education, which does not help for the unification quest. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Bruno's Restaurant
Background: After refusing to serve Bruno's brother in law with the simulated brain at my restaurant, I decide to make peace by inviting myself to go along with Brother in law B1ll to his favorite restaurant. It's the best in the city!, says B1ll. That sounds great, because I am really hungry., I reply anxiously. When we arrive we find a dark, silent building, full of empty seats. B1ll gestures for me to sit which I do and, it suddenly sounds like a restaurant. I hear sizzling and clanking for the kitchen and suddenly a waiter appears, offering me a menu. Just as I notice that the waiter bears a curious resemblance to Bruno, I wonder why he has not given B1ll a menu too. I've already ordered, says B1ll. I look down at the menu, but I see only one item on it. It is called The thing that you want to order. Wow. This is impressive. I look up and notice that what the waiter's nametag says. Ok, Brun-0, you win. I'll have a number not-not-one, with everything on it. Coming right up, monsieur. Would you like Löbian salad or Gödelian soup with that? The umlauts are excellent this time of year Sure Voila, Brun-0 exclaims. Seeing the confusion on my face, he gestures at the menu in my hand with a gracefully circular extension of his fingers, over and over, rotating in space hypnotically, until I realize that he wants me to turn the menu over. On the back of the menu is a beautiful HD video screen, which pops into life with a movie of someone sitting at...Hey!! It's Me! It's a movie of me, rendered so perfectly it looks absolutely real. I am being served a giant silver domed platter, which is removed to unveil a beautiful...menu. The camera pans down the gorgeous menu of sumptuous sounding descriptions of food. As the camera zooms into a closeup on the calligraphy, it can be seen that each culinary turn of phrase is constructed of beautifully written formulas and equations like G and Gp where p is delicious and G = emulated gustatory resource and p = Non-regurgitation parameters'. To my surprise, I now witness myself in the movie pick a fork and knife and begin eating the menu and thoroughly enjoying every bite. I seem to be making the exact yummy sounds and faces that I would expect. Turning to B1ll, I ask, What did you order? I already ate., he replies. As I look down at my clean plate and remember the great meal that I just had, I feel unusually satisfied. Curiously I can't remember exactly what it was that I ate, but I no reason to care. I can't care. I believe that I must have eaten exactly what I wanted. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/T7evZIA8pEgJ. 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:48:16 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Yes, such chicanery goes on, because men are no angels. But it has to be even worse is a socialist economy, where market forces (which tend to keep men more honest) Market forces do whatever the owners of the markets want them to do. Honesty has nothing to do with it. Socialism (as we have seen to the extent that it exists in Scandinavia) can be quite nice, and as we see from many places all over the world, there doesn't seem to be any particular correlation with the type of economy that a country has with how much of a hellhole it is. To me, capitalism is the essence of dishonesty. It is about selling something to others for more than you paid for it, which tends to involve keeping what you paid a secret from your customers. That doesn't mean it's not the best system, but I don't see why we should pretend that there is something good about it. Being a living thing depends on being able to exploit, kill and eat other living things. Capitalism is an extension of that. So is socialism. Craig are replaced by the biased wills of bureaucrats and politicians. I'd choose the market economy myself. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 20:32:34 Subject: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else out. Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant conflicts of interest. At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the market. The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin. Craig On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to others. Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources like this. The problem in the actual situation
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 9/16/2012 8:26 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Now I see your problem with Chalmers. It seems to be too sweeping a remark, but Leibniz would agree. because God, who is the supreme monad, causes all to happen. Mind is the ruling power. As I say below, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Hi Roger, I would agree completely with you but I cannot because of the phrase causes all. To cause something implies that there is a choice to act or not to act, God does not have this freedom, God, in his omnipotence, does all things and does not do anything at all. Our confusion flow from our inability to see ourselves as part of God. We are the ones that cause things, we are the expression of God's Will. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The poverty of computers
On 9/16/2012 8:31 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Not sure I understand your objection, but faith, being subjective (hence personal) is at least to first order principally in one individual. At the same time, however, since Mind is nonlocal, there has to be some spillover from other minds of like thinking. According to the monadology, also, an individual with his perceptions has a limited ability to see into the future. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Dear Roger, ..faith ... is at least to first order principally in one individual. Please elaborate on this! How do you see this when we have to consider many different individuals and not just one? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The poverty of computers
On 9/16/2012 8:31 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Not sure I understand your objection, but faith, being subjective (hence personal) is at least to first order principally in one individual. Dear Roger, There is more to say! At the same time, however, since Mind is nonlocal, there has to be some spillover from other minds of like thinking. Yes! But we need a way of modeling this idea. I have tried with a concept of bisimulation but it seems that the symbolic representation that some friends and I have put together is incomprehensible and anti-intuitive for others... :_( I think of this spillover as the ability to have multiple expression of the same thing. We can represent this as what occurs when several independent computers, each with their own language and grammar, have an equivalence relation such that something that one does (computes) is the same as something that another does (computes). If two computers perform exactly the same set of computations then we say that they are *exactly* bisimilar. If there is only a few or one computation that they can both perform then there is a bisimulation between them. We then ask if it is possible for that one computation (that is bisimilar) in each to be related (by some transformation(s)) to some or all of the other computations (that are in the collection of possible computations ( a repertoire) that each can perform). If there does exist a transformation or sequence of transformations, then there is a way of transforming the pair into each other iff that transformation(s) can be implemented on both of them. According to the monadology, also, an individual with his perceptions has a limited ability to see into the future. I see this as the result of the limits on computational resources available to the observer (monad). I can see the past because I have (locally) already generated my computational simulation of it and have a trace of that computation in my memory. I cannot observe what I have not computed yet! Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Am I making any sense at all? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
On 9/16/2012 8:39 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King The other minds problem (How do I know that there are other minds ?) is indeed an impossible to crack nut if you are a solipsist. So solipsim is perhaps the only philiosophy impossible to disprove. Or prove, I think. Leibniz was not a solipsist. Dear Roger, Maybe Leibniz did not understand that the solipsist view is the only consistent view of a single mind. It can only access reflections of itself; self-reference is the essence of its nature. The monad has no windows, it cannot exchange substances with other monads. All interactions between monads are given only in terms of synchronization of their respective internal dynamics. I am trying hard to understand exactly what this idea means, as I believe that it is a way to make sense of how QM systems interact with each other. QM systems are exactly like monads in that as pure systems, they have no windows. snip -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 9/16/2012 8:42 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, September 15, 2012 6:21:14 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: What you think third party observable behavior means is the set of all properties which are externally discoverable. I am saying that is a projection of naive realism, and that in reality, there is no such set, and that in fact the process of discovery of any properties supervenes on the properties of all participants and the methods of their interaction. Of course there is a set of all properties that are externally discoverable, even if you think this set is very small! No, there isn't. That is what I am telling you. Nothing exists outside of experience, which is creating new properties all of the time. There is no set at all. There is no such thing as a generic externality...each exterior is only a reflection of the interior of the system which discovers the interior of other systems as exteriors. Hi Craig! EXACTLY! Moreover, this set has subsets, and we can limit our discussion to these subsets. For example, if we are interested only in mass, we can simulate a human perfectly using the right number of rocks. Even someone who believes in an immortal soul would agree with this. No, I don't agree with it at all. You are eating the menu. A quantity of mass doesn't simulate anything except in your mind. Mass is a normative abstraction which we apply in comparing physical bodies with each other. To reduce a human being to a physical body is not a simulation is it only weighing a bag of organic molecules. Thus we can realistically claim that the physical world is exactly and only all things that we (as we truly are) have in common. What must be understood is that as the number of participating entities increase to infinity, the number of things in common goes to zero. Only for a large but finite set of entities will there be a semi-large number of relations that the entities have in common and not have a degeneracy relation between them. A black Hole is a nice demonstration of the degeneracy idea. The effect of gravity is the force of degeneracy, when all the ground states are forces to normalize and become identical with each other, the space and delay (time) that is different between them collapses to zero and thus we get singularity in the limit of the degeneracy. My point of using cats in this thought experiment is to specifically point out our naivete in assuming that instruments which extend our perception in only the most deterministic and easy to control ways are sufficient to define a 'third person'. If we look at the brain with a microscope, we see those parts of the brain that microscopes can see. If we look at New York with a swarm of cats, then we see the parts of New York that cats can see. Yes, but there are properties of the brain that may not be relevant to behaviour. Which properties are in fact important is determined by experiment. For example, we may replace the myelin sheath with a synthetic material that has similar electrical properties and then test an isolated nerve to see if action potentials propagate in the same way. If they do, then the next step is to incorporate the nerve in a network and see if the pattern of firing in the network looks normal. The step after that is to replace the myelin in the brain of a rat to see if the animal's behaviour changes. The modified rats are compared to unmodified rats by a blinded researcher to see if he can tell the difference. If no-one can consistently tell the difference then it is announced that the synthetic myelin appears to be a functionally identical substitute for natural myelin. Craig point here is that if we are going to perform a substitution then the artificial component must be capable of reproducing *all* of the functions of the neuron unless we are going to ignore the fact that neurons are not *just transistors*. We cannot fail to recognize that a neuron is not just one thing to each other and to the rest of the body and environment beyond it. We need to drop the idea that the universe is made up of gears and levers and springs and understand that it is not uniquely decomposable into isolate entities that can somehow retain their set of unique properties in isolation. Except it isn't identical. No imitation substance is identical to the original. Sooner or later the limits of the imitation will be found - or they could be advantages. Maybe the imitation myelin prevents brain cancer or heat stroke or something, but it also maybe prevents sensation in cold weather or maybe certain amino acids now cause Parkinson's disease. There is no such thing as identical.
Re: The poverty of computers
On 9/16/2012 8:45 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King My take on the meaning of knowledge of things unseen is knowledge of what is invisible at the moment. Hi Roger, I agree with this definition. It is equivalent to mine. What we must understand is that at the moment is something that can be and is different for each and every one of us. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 13:15:26 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/15/2012 8:57 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Faith is merely trust. I could have faith in a doorknob. But I wouldn't try faith in Satan. Even the doorknob would work to some extent, for trust opens you up to authority, to submission, and submission is the meat and potatoes of salvation. It's the bending over that does the work. In the case of salvation, bending over to Jesus. Hi Roger, I do not wish to sink into Scholastic style arguments, but I am trying to make a point here. Faith must be anticipatory or it is not capable of being knowledge of things unseen. If I where the one entity in the universe then it would not make any sense to confine knowledge of things not seem to a future tensed domain as anything that is beyond my direct reach would be in the domain defined by the not seen, but we appear to live in a universe where I can communicate with the fellow around the corner with a radio and he can tell me all about that is happening beyond my local reach. Thus if we are trying to be logically consistent in our definitions, we have to restrict the domain of Faith to the common future of any that I might be able to communicate with; not seen means not seen to anyone that I can communicate with, no? =-O Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-14, 12:11:35 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/14/2012 7:09 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Faith can be expressed as a belief, but faith itself is inner trust, confidence, etc. Faith Noun:Complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Dear Roger, But not just anything it is contained to cover only that which is possible in the future. Faith is forward projected belief. I have faith that the bridge can support my weight because it is possible to falsify that belief when I am actually crossing it.. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/14/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-13, 13:21:50 Subject: Re: Re: The poverty of computers On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:43:39 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal The shared part of religion (or science) is called belief(s). They are exclusively in the fom of words. For example words from the Bible, and the Creeds. The personal or private part of religion is called faith. It is not belief, for it is wordless, is more like trust or motivation. Religion trusts its creeds, science trust the laws of physics etc. It sounds like you are talking about the particular forms of religion though. In some other traditions, faith can be the public proclamation in words and belief is the privately expressed as wordless. Craig -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On 9/16/2012 8:52 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Mereology seems to be something like Spinoza's metaphysics, that there is just one stuff in the universe and that stuff is God. So there is just one material. Hi Roger, Yes. Each of these philosophers focused on different things, but they all seemed to agree on the idea of a fundamental substance. This is the idea that Bruno denotes as primitive matter. On analysis of the concept it can be understood that this substance is nothing more than a empty bearer of properties. I think that existence itself, the necessarily possible, is sufficient to bundle properties together. Leibniz is completely diffferent. Every substance is not only different, it keeps changing, and changing more than its shape, and is a reflection of the whole universe. I suspect that Leibniz saw Becoming as fundamental (the Heraclitus view) and thus considered all properties as the result of some process, some kind of change. His problem is that he neglected to examine in detail the fact that we cannot assume a change without having a way to measure its incrementation. Perhaps he merely assumes, with Newton, that God's metronome, clocked all change equally. Modern incarnations of this idea are evident in Universe as Cellular automata theories and those fail for the same reason as L's idea. We can repair and rehabilitate these idea by a careful consideration of what Special and General Relativity can tell us. The changing and the different aspects means Leibniz is non-materialistic. And all of my comments could have been said by Leibniz. I disagree. He was not non-materialistic at all, he just put the burden of distinguishing matter from non-matter into the hands of God and its PEH. He avoided the hard problems. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. snip -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
On 9/16/2012 8:55 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King I ALSO THINK WE SHOULD LOOK INTO THORIUM REACTORS BUT THERE ARE MANY DOUBTERS (CERTAINLY GREENIES AMONG THEM) THAT THEY WOULD WORK. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Hi Roger, I agree. It is obvious that the greenies are just the new incarnations of Luddites. It is amazing that they have the temerity to wish all of us into a Stone Age existence while they sit on their pillows of comfort and pontificate to us how we need to save the Earth. They just want us to accept the serfdom that they wish to impose upon us. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On 9/16/2012 9:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Background: After refusing to serve Bruno's brother in law with the simulated brain at my restaurant, I decide to make peace by inviting myself to go along with Brother in law B1ll to his favorite restaurant. It's the best in the city!, says B1ll. That sounds great, because I am really hungry., I reply anxiously. When we arrive we find a dark, silent building, full of empty seats. B1ll gestures for me to sit which I do and, it suddenly sounds like a restaurant. I hear sizzling and clanking for the kitchen and suddenly a waiter appears, offering me a menu. Just as I notice that the waiter bears a curious resemblance to Bruno, I wonder why he has not given B1ll a menu too. I've already ordered, says B1ll. I look down at the menu, but I see only one item on it. It is called The thing that you want to order. Wow. This is impressive. I look up and notice that what the waiter's nametag says. Ok, Brun-0, you win. I'll have a number not-not-one, with everything on it. Coming right up, monsieur. Would you like Löbian salad or Gödelian soup with that? The umlauts are excellent this time of year Sure Voila, Brun-0 exclaims. Seeing the confusion on my face, he gestures at the menu in my hand with a gracefully circular extension of his fingers, over and over, rotating in space hypnotically, until I realize that he wants me to turn the menu over. On the back of the menu is a beautiful HD video screen, which pops into life with a movie of someone sitting at...Hey!! It's Me! It's a movie of me, rendered so perfectly it looks absolutely real. I am being served a giant silver domed platter, which is removed to unveil a beautiful...menu. The camera pans down the gorgeous menu of sumptuous sounding descriptions of food. As the camera zooms into a closeup on the calligraphy, it can be seen that each culinary turn of phrase is constructed of beautifully written formulas and equations like G and Gp where p is delicious and G = emulated gustatory resource and p = Non-regurgitation parameters'. To my surprise, I now witness myself in the movie pick a fork and knife and begin eating the menu and thoroughly enjoying every bite. I seem to be making the exact yummy sounds and faces that I would expect. Turning to B1ll, I ask, What did you order? I already ate., he replies. As I look down at my clean plate and remember the great meal that I just had, I feel unusually satisfied. Curiously I can't remember exactly what it was that I ate, but I no reason to care. I can't care. I believe that I must have eaten exactly what I wanted. Craig Check out the Matrix version of this story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BuQFUhsRM -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Alice and Wittgenstein: Materialism, Functionalism, and Comp
Craig, You may want to look at Galen Strawson, Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics He proves that selves exist. Interestingly enough he does it based on the materialist framework. p. 11 “For the moment, though, the brief is to show that selves exist, and that they’re things or objects or ‘substances’ of some sort, and hence, given materialism, physical objects. One possibility is that there are in fact no better candidates for the title of ‘physical object’ than selves – even if there are others that are as good.” p. 11 “This last suggestion is likely to strike many as obviously false, but this reaction may stem in part from a failure to think through what it is for something to be physical, on a genuine or realistic materialist view, and, equally, from a failure to think through what it is for something to be a thing or object.” Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/09/selves-an-essay-in-revisionary-metaphysics.html On 08.09.2012 15:10 Craig Weinberg said the following: Here I present another metaphor to encapsulate by view of the relation between consciousness, information, and physicality by demonstrating the inadequacy of functionalist, computationalist, and materialist models and how they paint over the hard problem of consciousness with a choice of two flavors of the easy problem. I came up with this thought exercise in response to this lecture: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2012/05/zoe-drayson-the-autonomy-of-the-mental-and-the-personalsubpersonal-distinction/ Consider Alice in Wonderland Let's say that Alice is trying to decide whether she can describe herself in terms of being composed of the syntax of the letters, words, and sentences of the story from which she emerges, or whether she is composed of the bleached and pressed wood pulp and ink that are considered page parts of the whole book. -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
Hi Stephan, I would like to quibble about your statement: For God, all things are given but once and there is no need to compute the relations . in terms of the OMEGA Point (OP). Both in MWI and SWI, God (or whatever mechanism) is able to compute the OP. But I suspect that the computation is not once and for all due to human and other (even spiritual) consciousness exercising free choice. As a result God must have to continually compute OP, especially if SWI is the physical reality. It may be that the MWI computation is 'once and for all', if MWI are the multiple physical realities. But then there will be multiple OPs as well. Richard On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/16/2012 8:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Leibniz was not a solipsist, since he took it for granted that the world out there was actually there. If a tree fell in a forest and nobody heard it, it still would have fallen. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Dear Roger, I agree with you, but if you read L's writings you will find that he depended on God to act as a universal observer that could distinguish all of the aspects of the world *and* other monads from each other *and* see the relationships between them. This is the essence of the idea of a pre-established harmony. For God, all things are given but once and there is no need to compute the relations (which is an infinite NP-Hard computation!). I claim that God *is* the computation of all things and all the things as well. Bruno represents this in his work as a Universal Dovetailing of all possible computations. But we fail if we do not understand that from our finite and incomplete view that the PEH is simply not accessible. We must consume resources and do our version of the universal computation ourselves to gain the knowledge. We cannot just download the results from God's Cloud. You might note that downloading itself is a computation that requires resources to be consumed! Knowledge is never free. I claim that bisimulation is interaction and that our local computations, implicit in our observations of the world around us, is a reflection of the eternal PEH of God. Plato saw this and sought to explain it with the allegory of the Cave and the Divided Line. Silly humans ignore the requirements of local reality and imagine that they can just download God's view and not have to do the hard work for themselves. Sorry, there is no such thing as a free lunch! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 1:44 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In fact it [CO2] has been less than half the current level during the last 600 thousand years There have been at least 4 times in the last 600 thousand years when the CO2 levels were nearly as high as they are now. And the link between CO2 and temperature is far from clear. During the late Ordovician period 450 million years ago there was a huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, about 4400 ppm verses 380 today, and yet the world was in the grip of a severe ice age. During the last 600 million years the atmosphere has almost always had far more CO2 than now, abut 3000 ppm on average. The only exception was a period that lasted from 315 million years ago to 270 where there was about the same amount of CO2 as we have now. The temperature was about the same then as it is now too, and during the late Ordovician that I mentioned before it was much colder, but other than a few very brief ice ages during the last few million years the temperature has always been warmer than now. But it is not just the level that is worrisome, it is the rapidity of increase, which would appear as instantaneous on the paleoclimate studies. If you adjust the scale of a graph you can always make a gentle rise look like a near vertical wall. And I think people sometimes forget that CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, water vapor is But water vapor equilibrates with ocean temperature very quickly, whereas CO2 takes hundreds of years to come into equilibrium. Water vapor is the most important green house gas, but it acts as a positive feedback, amplifying other warming (or cooling) effects. If water always produced positive feedback then with all the water on this planet life would never have existed in the first place, but things are more complicated than that. Let me ask you something, if the world's temperature increases will that create more clouds or fewer clouds? It's a very simple question with profound consequences because clouds regulate the amount of solar energy that runs the entire climate show. Increased temperature means more water evaporates from the sea, but it also means the atmosphere can hold more water before it is forced to form clouds. So who wins this tug of war? Nobody knows, its too complicated. Water vapor is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and unlike CO2 it undergoes phase changes at earthly temperatures, it can be a solid a liquid or a gas which makes it much more complicated than CO2 which is always just a gas, at least on this planet. And then there is the important issue of global dimming, the world may be getting warmer but it is also getting dimmer. For reasons that are not clearly understood but may be related to clouds, at any given temperature it takes longer now for water to evaporate than it did 50 years ago. 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
On 16.09.2012 18:29 Stephen P. King said the following: On 9/16/2012 8:55 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King I ALSO THINK WE SHOULD LOOK INTO THORIUM REACTORS BUT THERE ARE MANY DOUBTERS (CERTAINLY GREENIES AMONG THEM) THAT THEY WOULD WORK. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Hi Roger, I agree. It is obvious that the greenies are just the new incarnations of Luddites. It is amazing that they have the temerity to wish all of us into a Stone Age existence while they sit on their pillows of comfort and pontificate to us how we need to save the Earth. They just want us to accept the serfdom that they wish to impose upon us. If you look at Germany, you see that you are not quite right. It is better to see this, as usually, a fight for resources between different interest groups, in this case for example an atomic lobby vs. a wind power lobby. Yet, it is hard to refer to the wind power lobby as Luddites. It brings many new and interesting scientific question with, for example look at Smart Grids. Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:13:57 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/16/2012 8:42 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, September 15, 2012 6:21:14 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: Moreover, this set has subsets, and we can limit our discussion to these subsets. For example, if we are interested only in mass, we can simulate a human perfectly using the right number of rocks. Even someone who believes in an immortal soul would agree with this. No, I don't agree with it at all. You are eating the menu. A quantity of mass doesn't simulate anything except in your mind. Mass is a normative abstraction which we apply in comparing physical bodies with each other. To reduce a human being to a physical body is not a simulation is it only weighing a bag of organic molecules. Thus we can realistically claim that the physical world is exactly and only all things that we (as we truly are) have in common. What must be understood is that as the number of participating entities increase to infinity, the number of things in common goes to zero. Only for a large but finite set of entities will there be a semi-large number of relations that the entities have in common and not have a degeneracy relation between them. That's exactly the backbone equivalence of multisense realism. As the most common denominators, the characteristics of quanta are the most impersonal and common forms of qualia. Because of the privacy of qualia, it really drains almost everything out of it to make it shared to the point of near universality. Qualia drained of most quality is really involuted qualia, but because it has no existence of its own, it doesn't commute the other way around. Qualia isn't involuted quanta, as quanta isn't anything without first being qualia. Both logical algebras and topologies are quanta. They are reductions of qualia, not particles or qualia-free informaiton which generate qualia. An mp3 file is a compression, not of music, but of the articulations of current which matches the acoustic dynamic conditions associated with sound perception. We can intellectually match the data of the mp3 file with any external topology (eardrum, needle on vinyl, speaker, laser pits on a CD, etc), and the logical algebra which (figuratively) animates that topology ( f(mp3)), but they only relate to each other, and not any kind of subjective experience. A black Hole is a nice demonstration of the degeneracy idea. The effect of gravity is the force of degeneracy, when all the ground states are forces to normalize and become identical with each other, the space and delay (time) that is different between them collapses to zero and thus we get singularity in the limit of the degeneracy. That's cool. I can see that in my terms too, with gravity being like Kryptonite to motive participation. Systems lose their ability to differentiate themselves from a large mass. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/LMMkFn7WhiwJ. 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Alice and Wittgenstein: Materialism, Functionalism, and Comp
On Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:34:47 PM UTC-4, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Craig, You may want to look at Galen Strawson, Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics He proves that selves exist. Interestingly enough he does it based on the materialist framework. p. 11 �For the moment, though, the brief is to show that selves exist, and that they�re things or objects or �substances� of some sort, and hence, given materialism, physical objects. One possibility is that there are in fact no better candidates for the title of �physical object� than selves � even if there are others that are as good.� p. 11 �This last suggestion is likely to strike many as obviously false, but this reaction may stem in part from a failure to think through what it is for something to be physical, on a genuine or realistic materialist view, and, equally, from a failure to think through what it is for something to be a thing or object.� Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/09/selves-an-essay-in-revisionary-metaphysics.html Thanks Evgenii. I have been meaning to check out Strawson for a while actually. I agree that the self is physically and concretely real, but I don't think it is an object. The self is the subject. I see and agree with what Strawson is saying about the necessity of expanding our sense of what is physical, and I understand why he thinks it makes sense to think of the self as more of a 'thing' than anything - and I would agree, except that 'thing' is a term of objectification. I can only see myself as a thing in theory. In fact, who I am has no thingness at all from my own perspective. There is no object here, nothing which can be defined in terms of size, weight, temperature, etc. A subject is made of qualities that have only figurative dimensions, not literal body qualities. Craig On 08.09.2012 15:10 Craig Weinberg said the following: Here I present another metaphor to encapsulate by view of the relation between consciousness, information, and physicality by demonstrating the inadequacy of functionalist, computationalist, and materialist models and how they paint over the hard problem of consciousness with a choice of two flavors of the easy problem. I came up with this thought exercise in response to this lecture: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2012/05/zoe-drayson-the-autonomy-of-the-mental-and-the-personalsubpersonal-distinction/ Consider Alice in Wonderland Let's say that Alice is trying to decide whether she can describe herself in terms of being composed of the syntax of the letters, words, and sentences of the story from which she emerges, or whether she is composed of the bleached and pressed wood pulp and ink that are considered page parts of the whole book. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/VDrJ9z7gn7kJ. 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 , Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: God loved the Israelites and hated their enemies. Well that hardly seems fair, and God hated a hell of a lot more of His creations than he loved. God did heap down fire and brimstone on the enemies of his people. I understand that, what I don't understand is why we should love such a monster. God and Jesus are two different people, although paradoxically both are parts of the trinity. Doesn't it ever bother you that you believe very deeply in something that you know to be paradoxical and do so for no other reason than that's what you were told as a child? Does it ever bother you that the only reason they told you that is that they themselves were told that when they were children? Jesus' bark was much worse than his bite. In other words Jesus was a damn liar telling disgusting and terrifying tails to His children for no other reason than to get them to do what He wanted them to do. And That's exactly the same reason Bernie Madoff told lies. He was angry at sinners and sin, as you might expect him to be. No, that's not what I'd expect an all loving all knowing omnipotent being to do! But He died for them -- and us as well -- at Golgotha. So God arranged things so that we would torture Him to death because then He could forgive us for eating a apple. You really have to teach that to children when they are very very young, if you waited till they're 17 they'd laugh in your face. Jesus had infinite resources at his disposal and could have come off that cross with a snap of His fingers, and I'm supposed to get all weepy over Golgotha?? If He really wanted to show His love for us a cure for bone cancer would be more appreciated than the stupid cross stunt. 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Alice and Wittgenstein: Materialism, Functionalism, and Comp
On 16.09.2012 19:03 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:34:47 PM UTC-4, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Craig, You may want to look at Galen Strawson, Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics He proves that selves exist. Interestingly enough he does it based on the materialist framework. p. 11 �For the moment, though, the brief is to show that selves exist, and that they�re things or objects or �substances� of some sort, and hence, given materialism, physical objects. One possibility is that there are in fact no better candidates for the title of �physical object� than selves � even if there are others that are as good.� p. 11 �This last suggestion is likely to strike many as obviously false, but this reaction may stem in part from a failure to think through what it is for something to be physical, on a genuine or realistic materialist view, and, equally, from a failure to think through what it is for something to be a thing or object.� Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/09/selves-an-essay-in-revisionary-metaphysics.html Thanks Evgenii. I have been meaning to check out Strawson for a while actually. I agree that the self is physically and concretely real, but I don't think it is an object. The self is the subject. I see and agree with what Strawson is saying about the necessity of expanding our sense of what is physical, and I understand why he thinks it makes sense to think of the self as more of a 'thing' than anything - and I would agree, except that 'thing' is a term of objectification. I can only see myself as a thing in theory. In fact, who I am has no thingness at all from my own perspective. There is no object here, nothing which can be defined in terms of size, weight, temperature, etc. A subject is made of qualities that have only figurative dimensions, not literal body qualities. According to Strawson, what exists as a thing is SUBJECT OF EXPERIENCE-AS-SINGLE-MENTAL-THING for short SESMET. Hence no contradiction. Evgenii -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The poverty of computers
On 16 Sep 2012, at 13:36, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal All love, all truth, all beauty necessarily comes from God (Platonia's All). So if you can feel any of those, there's your experience. Yes. But with comp there is a sense to say that Satan can fail all finite creatures on this, and imitate God, so that we can be deluded, and so we have to be very vigilant with those matter. Art is a serious matter somehow. Platonia owns fatal beauties. Nobody knows in advance, we can only listen to the complains and reduce the harm. It is sad, perhaps, but we can't avoid them. Like math is full of chimera. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 12:47:02 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 15 Sep 2012, at 13:08, Roger Clough wrote: Hi John Clark Theology was once called the queen of the sciences, but that was just a power rating. Theology is not a science, it's closer to but different than philosophy in that theology is, or should be, based on scripture. God's teachings, not man's. I guess that it is here that we might disagree the more. Theology, like everything else, should rely only to the experience, and then logic, theories, etc. The experience can be helped by practice, meditation, prayer, plants, walking in woods and mountains, surfing the ocean, looking at Hubble picture, or doing jazz, and some Church can help a lot, when they handle magically the sun light. Humans are known to write a lot of things, so scripture, as inspiring they can be, should never taken literally, nor ever too much seriously. Most religion agree that God is not human conceivable, and that is why we can be deluded in recognizing sign, so that it is better to trust God for teaching Itself to the others, and not intervene too much on that plane. Cautious. If not you are, willingly or unwillingly, imposing your conception of reality to the other. Truth is a goddess which does not need any army to win. Philosophy deals with belief and reason, You mean science? OK. moreorless. Theology deals with faith and scripture. Theology deals with our relation with the big thing. Faith is a universal gift, but scriptures, when taken too much literally, or too much repeated, can kill the original faith that we have all. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain.
On 16 Sep 2012, at 13:47, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Yes, such chicanery goes on, because men are no angels. But it has to be even worse is a socialist economy, where market forces (which tend to keep men more honest) are replaced by the biased wills of bureaucrats and politicians. I'd choose the market economy myself. Marked economy + democracy is the best, as long as money is not based on lies. Politicians should perhaps never been funded by money from lobbies and corporatism, but only from controlled public fund, based on taxes on everybody. Power separations should be refined, there are quite porous those days. It is more dangerous than a leaking nuclear building. Bruno PS Just heard that Israel legalizes medical marijuana. That is a good news. I hope the South American countries will quickly follow that step. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 20:32:34 Subject: Re: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. It's doubtful that there has ever been such a pristine market. The basic exchange between free agents is in all real cases weighted by those interests which control and manipulate the market. Look at how Microsoft created their monopoly. It made crappy imitations of all of their potential competitors software and gave it away for free to drive them out of business - which they did. They knew that as long as their deal with IBM to distribute Windows with PCs, all they had to do was starve everyone else out. Look at how CEOs sit on the each others board of directors and vote each other gigantic salary increases despite poor performance and blatant conflicts of interest. At best, price always equals cost plus rent plus tax plus interest, so even if there were free agents who somehow had fair access to the market, their profit is still influenced by banks, government, and property owners. As soon as a new market is born however, all real opportunity to compete shakes out rapidly as business relations are consolidated and become entrenched. Innovators tend to be ripped off, bought, or shut out of the market. The assumption of a free market is no less of a fantasy than the assumption of a communist utopia. They are two sides of the same coin. Craig On Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:37:04 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona At the heart of a market economy (which has existed since the cave man), there is a fundamental freedom, you can buy or sell if the price is right, where price = value = what you are willing to pay or sell for. So the market is basically psychological and free and is as old as man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 07:37:44 Subject: Re: Needed: A calculus of pleasure and pain. Hi Roger, But neither Darwin nor Spencer discovered darwinism. a selection between alternatives is at the heart of every creative process (that creates order). It is a form of creative destruction. The market and the war are examples of such process. But it is also running now in this discussion. It is in our mind, that select and discard ideas depending on their consequences. It is in the political organization of the society etc. One of the first things that a darwinian process develops is a way to protect the created order from its own destructive nature. Capitalism in a democracy with the rule of law is a very sophisticated organization that run above a human nature that is deeply social. And this human nature is naturally selected. Probably the highest satisfaction that a man may have, abobe money, is to be helpful to others. Probably the natural human instincts of compassion would be enough without the inefficient artificial state-run welfare systems. A simple traditional religious commandments would suffice to remember our personal responsibilities with the others and would make these corrupt structures innecessary. This has been that way until few centuries ago. It would be more that enough in a society with so much resources like this. The problem in the actual situation is that the narrow selfishness that is being promoted in the modern society is not only dysfunctional at the social level, because it also makes necessary the externalization of the compassion away from the individual, because it is incompatible with the narrow selfish concept of freedom as absence of obligations. Not only that, because it is also dysfunctional at the individual level, because we as humans need to help others . We need to feel useful to others to be happy. 2012/9/14 Roger Clough :
Prime Numbers
It seems to me that numbers are based on our ability to judge relative magnitudes: Which is bigger, which is closer, which is heavier, etc. Many animals have this ability - called numeracy. Humans differ only in the degree to which it is developed, and in our ability to build higher level abstractions on top of this fundamental skill. SO - prime numbers, I think, emerge from a peculiar characteristic of our ability to judge relative magnitudes, and the way this feeds into the abstractions we build on top of that ability. =*= Let’s say you take a board and divide it into 3 sections of equal length (say, by drawing a line on it at the section boundaries). Having done so – is there a way that you could have divided the board into fewer sections of equal length so that every endpoint of a long section can be matched to the end of a shorter section? In other words – take two boards of equal length. Divide one into 3 sections. Divide the other into two sections. The dividing point of the two-section-board will fall right into the middle of the middle section of the three-section-board. There is no way to divide the second board into fewer sections so that all of its dividing points are matched against a dividing point on the longer board. Because of this – three is a prime. (Notice that I do not say: “this is because 3 is prime” – instead I reverse the causal arrow). =*= Let’s take two boards and divide the first one into 10 equally sized sections. Now – there are two ways that we can divide the second board into a smaller number of equally sized sections so that the end-points of every section on this second board are matched to a sectional dividing point on the first board (though the opposite will not be true): We can divide the second board into either 2 sections (in which case the dividing point will align with the end of the 5th section on the first board), OR We can divide the second board into 5 sections – each of which is the same size as two sections on the first board. Because of this, the number 10 is not prime. =*= The entire field of Number Theory grows out of this peculiar characteristic of how we judge relative magnitudes. Do you think? -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
On 9/16/2012 12:44 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 15.09.2012 21:56 meekerdb said the following: On 9/15/2012 9:35 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/15/2012 4:11 AM, Russell Standish wrote: ... Hi Russell, That is far too inclusive a definition of computation. Not really, it only requires some way of representing the information such that it can be transformed. The integers are not the only kind of number that we can represent numbers (or any other mathematical object) with. IMHO, we are naive to think that Nature is hobbled to only use integers to perform her Computations. We must never project our deficiencies on Nature. I would go even farther than Russell implies. A lot of the muddle about computation and consciousness comes about because they are abstracted out of the world. That's why I like to think in terms of robots or Mars rovers. Consciousness and computation are given their meaning by their effecting actions in the world. To find out what a string of 1s and 0s means a Mars rovers memory you need to see what effect they have on its actions. You know that 1+1=10 means 1+1=2 when 10 in a register causes it to pick up two rocks. So to further abstract computation to mean transformation of information will lead to even more of a muddle. Brent So this is some kind of enactive model of consciousness, similar to what Alva Noë writes in Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. One question in this respect. Let me start with a quote from Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness Section Can qualia be reduced to the exercise of sensory-motor skills? p. 102 “Piloting a 747 no doubt feels like something to a human pilot, and the way that it feels is likely to have something to do with human biology. But why should it feel the same way to an electronic autopilot that replaces the skills exercised by a human being? Or why should it feel like anything to be the control system of a guided missile system? Anyone versed in the construction of electronic control systems knows that if one builds a system in the right way, it will function just as it is intended to do, whether it feels like anything to be that system or not. If so, functioning in an electronic (or any other) system is logically tangential to whether it is like anything to be that system, leaving the hard problem of why it happens to feel a certain way in humans untouched.” Do you mean that the meaning in a guided missile system happens as by-product of its development by engineers? To me, it seems that meaning that you have defined in Mars Rovers is yet another theory of epiphenomenalism. And your quote and question are yet another example of nothing buttery and argument by incredulity. Brent -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Alice and Wittgenstein: Materialism, Functionalism, and Comp
On 9/16/2012 12:34 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Craig, You may want to look at Galen Strawson, Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics He proves that selves exist. Interestingly enough he does it based on the materialist framework. p. 11 “For the moment, though, the brief is to show that selves exist, and that they’re things or objects or ‘substances’ of some sort, and hence, given materialism, physical objects. One possibility is that there are in fact no better candidates for the title of ‘physical object’ than selves – even if there are others that are as good.” p. 11 “This last suggestion is likely to strike many as obviously false, but this reaction may stem in part from a failure to think through what it is for something to be physical, on a genuine or realistic materialist view, and, equally, from a failure to think through what it is for something to be a thing or object.” Evgenii Dear Evgenii, I disagree. Strawson does not prove or offer a proof here. He merely states an equality. TO prove that equality he must show that the necessary and sufficient condition of selves exists in (assuming materialism), physical objects. I have read his papers, he fails. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers
On 9/16/2012 12:35 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: Hi Stephan, I would like to quibble about your statement: For God, all things are given but once and there is no need to compute the relations . in terms of the OMEGA Point (OP). Hi Richard, A good friend of mine (who I was just talking to a moment ago) and I once gave a talk on Tipler's OP theory. I am quite familiar with it. Both in MWI and SWI, God (or whatever mechanism) is able to compute the OP. Yes, the computation occurs in the Unitary evolution of total quantum wave function of the Universe - All that exists. This leads to a nice equation H=0. This is the Wheeler-Dewitt Equation. We see something very interesting in this equation. The time variable t vanished (becomes zero). This has the effect of making the unitary evolution equivalent to a automorphism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automorphism. Inmathematics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics, an*automorphism*is anisomorphism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphismfrom amathematical object http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_objectto itself. It is, in some sense, asymmetry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetryof the object, and a way ofmapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_%28mathematics%29the object to itself while preserving all of its structure. The set of all automorphisms of an object forms a group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_%28mathematics%29, called the*automorphism group*. It is, loosely speaking, thesymmetry group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_groupof the object. But I suspect that the computation is not once and for all due to human and other (even spiritual) consciousness exercising free choice. And I agree with this suspicion! We have free will exactly because our existence as finite creatures that find ourselves in physical shells and so all kinds of things is exactly described somewhere in that set of automorphism. The question that we need to ask is: What is it that break the total global symmetry of the Universe such that I have this notion of freedom to chose from a set of alternatives that seems equivalent in value to me -all other things being equal? What is is that breaks that symmetry? As a result God must have to continually compute OP, especially if SWI is the physical reality. No, I am claiming *we are pieces of the computation* and to us it looks like it is many computations that seem to have nothing at all to do with each other and these computations can be arbitrarily extended if certain conditions are met. It may be that the MWI computation is 'once and for all', if MWI are the multiple physical realities. But then there will be multiple OPs as well. There are many and there is only one. The Many is the collection of fractured and broken collection of Images of the One. Richard -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years
On 9/16/2012 12:43 PM, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 1:44 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In fact it [CO2] has been less than half the current level during the last 600 thousand years There have been at least 4 times in the last 600 thousand years when the CO2 levels were nearly as high as they are now. And the link between CO2 and temperature is far from clear. During the late Ordovician period 450 million years ago there was a huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, about 4400 ppm verses 380 today, and yet the world was in the grip of a severe ice age. During the last 600 million years the atmosphere has almost always had far more CO2 than now, abut 3000 ppm on average. The only exception was a period that lasted from 315 million years ago to 270 where there was about the same amount of CO2 as we have now. The temperature was about the same then as it is now too, and during the late Ordovician that I mentioned before it was much colder, but other than a few very brief ice ages during the last few million years the temperature has always been warmer than now. But it is not just the level that is worrisome, it is the rapidity of increase, which would appear as instantaneous on the paleoclimate studies. If you adjust the scale of a graph you can always make a gentle rise look like a near vertical wall. And I think people sometimes forget that CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, water vapor is But water vapor equilibrates with ocean temperature very quickly, whereas CO2 takes hundreds of years to come into equilibrium. Water vapor is the most important green house gas, but it acts as a positive feedback, amplifying other warming (or cooling) effects. If water always produced positive feedback then with all the water on this planet life would never have existed in the first place, but things are more complicated than that. Let me ask you something, if the world's temperature increases will that create more clouds or fewer clouds? It's a very simple question with profound consequences because clouds regulate the amount of solar energy that runs the entire climate show. Increased temperature means more water evaporates from the sea, but it also means the atmosphere can hold more water before it is forced to form clouds. So who wins this tug of war? Nobody knows, its too complicated. Water vapor is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and unlike CO2 it undergoes phase changes at earthly temperatures, it can be a solid a liquid or a gas which makes it much more complicated than CO2 which is always just a gas, at least on this planet. And then there is the important issue of global dimming, the world may be getting warmer but it is also getting dimmer. For reasons that are not clearly understood but may be related to clouds, at any given temperature it takes longer now for water to evaporate than it did 50 years ago. John K Clark John, Did you see the study of the connection between cloud formation and cosmic rays? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
On 9/16/2012 12:43 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 16.09.2012 18:29 Stephen P. King said the following: On 9/16/2012 8:55 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King I ALSO THINK WE SHOULD LOOK INTO THORIUM REACTORS BUT THERE ARE MANY DOUBTERS (CERTAINLY GREENIES AMONG THEM) THAT THEY WOULD WORK. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Hi Roger, I agree. It is obvious that the greenies are just the new incarnations of Luddites. It is amazing that they have the temerity to wish all of us into a Stone Age existence while they sit on their pillows of comfort and pontificate to us how we need to save the Earth. They just want us to accept the serfdom that they wish to impose upon us. If you look at Germany, you see that you are not quite right. It is better to see this, as usually, a fight for resources between different interest groups, in this case for example an atomic lobby vs. a wind power lobby. Yet, it is hard to refer to the wind power lobby as Luddites. It brings many new and interesting scientific question with, for example look at Smart Grids. Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru I always try to find a global view that allows me to see the opposing sides as on an equal footing. I only care about Truth, not political affiliations. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 9/16/2012 12:49 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:13:57 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/16/2012 8:42 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, September 15, 2012 6:21:14 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: Moreover, this set has subsets, and we can limit our discussion to these subsets. For example, if we are interested only in mass, we can simulate a human perfectly using the right number of rocks. Even someone who believes in an immortal soul would agree with this. No, I don't agree with it at all. You are eating the menu. A quantity of mass doesn't simulate anything except in your mind. Mass is a normative abstraction which we apply in comparing physical bodies with each other. To reduce a human being to a physical body is not a simulation is it only weighing a bag of organic molecules. Thus we can realistically claim that the physical world is exactly and only all things that we (as we truly are) have in common. What must be understood is that as the number of participating entities increase to infinity, the number of things in common goes to zero. Only for a large but finite set of entities will there be a semi-large number of relations that the entities have in common and not have a degeneracy relation between them. That's exactly the backbone equivalence of multisense realism. As the most common denominators, the characteristics of quanta are the most impersonal and common forms of qualia. Because of the privacy of qualia, it really drains almost everything out of it to make it shared to the point of near universality. Qualia drained of most quality is really involuted qualia, but because it has no existence of its own, it doesn't commute the other way around. Qualia isn't involuted quanta, as quanta isn't anything without first being qualia. Both logical algebras and topologies are quanta. They are reductions of qualia, not particles or qualia-free informaiton which generate qualia. An mp3 file is a compression, not of music, but of the articulations of current which matches the acoustic dynamic conditions associated with sound perception. We can intellectually match the data of the mp3 file with any external topology (eardrum, needle on vinyl, speaker, laser pits on a CD, etc), and the logical algebra which (figuratively) animates that topology ( f(mp3)), but they only relate to each other, and not any kind of subjective experience. A black Hole is a nice demonstration of the degeneracy idea. The effect of gravity is the force of degeneracy, when all the ground states are forces to normalize and become identical with each other, the space and delay (time) that is different between them collapses to zero and thus we get singularity in the limit of the degeneracy. That's cool. I can see that in my terms too, with gravity being like Kryptonite to motive participation. Systems lose their ability to differentiate themselves from a large mass. Craig Horray! We bisimulate! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
It may be too late to do someting about global warming. In the early 1980s we had plenty of time to act, today we have to accept at least 2°C temperature rise and hope that will not cause big problems, but even that will require taking drastic measures. You don't need catastrophic effects on the environment to cause or civilization to collapse. All that is needed is a prolonged period of bad weather that will cause agriculture to fail in a few rich countries. If there are problems in poor countries, you can get a local famine, which is bad for the local population, but it isn't going to pose a problem for the wider World. If however, agriculture fails in India, China, Australia, and Russia, then these countries have enough money to buy themselves out of a famine, but then that will cause global food shortages. Tne US will have to ban grain exports to make sure that not all of its grain gets exported away to China, but this will trigger counter measures eventually leading to the collapse of the World economy. Basicaly the problem is that if Saudi Arabia can't buy grain, why would they sell their oil? Saibal Citeren Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net: On 9/16/2012 12:43 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 16.09.2012 18:29 Stephen P. King said the following: On 9/16/2012 8:55 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King I ALSO THINK WE SHOULD LOOK INTO THORIUM REACTORS BUT THERE ARE MANY DOUBTERS (CERTAINLY GREENIES AMONG THEM) THAT THEY WOULD WORK. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Hi Roger, I agree. It is obvious that the greenies are just the new incarnations of Luddites. It is amazing that they have the temerity to wish all of us into a Stone Age existence while they sit on their pillows of comfort and pontificate to us how we need to save the Earth. They just want us to accept the serfdom that they wish to impose upon us. If you look at Germany, you see that you are not quite right. It is better to see this, as usually, a fight for resources between different interest groups, in this case for example an atomic lobby vs. a wind power lobby. Yet, it is hard to refer to the wind power lobby as Luddites. It brings many new and interesting scientific question with, for example look at Smart Grids. Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru I always try to find a global view that allows me to see the opposing sides as on an equal footing. I only care about Truth, not political affiliations. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Alice and Wittgenstein: Materialism, Functionalism, and Comp
On Sunday, September 16, 2012 2:42:20 PM UTC-4, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: According to Strawson, what exists as a thing is SUBJECT OF EXPERIENCE-AS-SINGLE-MENTAL-THING for short SESMET. Hence no contradiction. Evgenii I think the word 'exists' can be confusing. I reserve the term 'insist' for phenomenological subjects. Through my mental participation, I can insist that Bugs Bunny's dog is a 'thing', but to say that this is a single thing that now exists in the universe is misleading. I try to reserve 'exist' for the contents of exterior public realism. Subjects then, are never a single anything, but rather neither single nor multiple experiential potentials. They are trans-rational and a-mereological diffractions which vary and resist varying to different extents in different contexts of perception and participation. Subjects are the opposite of things. They have no location or appearance, but they also do not lack a location or appearance. They are qualia. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/hwsrd8cTlEYJ. 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Alice and Wittgenstein: Materialism, Functionalism, and Comp
On 9/16/2012 2:42 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 16.09.2012 19:03 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:34:47 PM UTC-4, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Craig, You may want to look at Galen Strawson, Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics He proves that selves exist. Interestingly enough he does it based on the materialist framework. p. 11 �For the moment, though, the brief is to show that selves exist, and that they�re things or objects or �substances� of some sort, and hence, given materialism, physical objects. One possibility is that there are in fact no better candidates for the title of �physical object� than selves � even if there are others that are as good.� p. 11 �This last suggestion is likely to strike many as obviously false, but this reaction may stem in part from a failure to think through what it is for something to be physical, on a genuine or realistic materialist view, and, equally, from a failure to think through what it is for something to be a thing or object.� Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/09/selves-an-essay-in-revisionary-metaphysics.html Thanks Evgenii. I have been meaning to check out Strawson for a while actually. I agree that the self is physically and concretely real, but I don't think it is an object. The self is the subject. I see and agree with what Strawson is saying about the necessity of expanding our sense of what is physical, and I understand why he thinks it makes sense to think of the self as more of a 'thing' than anything - and I would agree, except that 'thing' is a term of objectification. I can only see myself as a thing in theory. In fact, who I am has no thingness at all from my own perspective. There is no object here, nothing which can be defined in terms of size, weight, temperature, etc. A subject is made of qualities that have only figurative dimensions, not literal body qualities. According to Strawson, what exists as a thing is SUBJECT OF EXPERIENCE-AS-SINGLE-MENTAL-THING for short SESMET. Hence no contradiction. Evgenii OK! Then Strawson cannot claim to be a materialist. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
On 9/16/2012 1:37 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: It may be too late to do someting about global warming. In the early 1980s we had plenty of time to act, today we have to accept at least 2°C temperature rise and hope that will not cause big problems, but even that will require taking drastic measures. You don't need catastrophic effects on the environment to cause or civilization to collapse. All that is needed is a prolonged period of bad weather that will cause agriculture to fail in a few rich countries. If there are problems in poor countries, you can get a local famine, which is bad for the local population, but it isn't going to pose a problem for the wider World. If however, agriculture fails in India, China, Australia, and Russia, then these countries have enough money to buy themselves out of a famine, but then that will cause global food shortages. Tne US will have to ban grain exports to make sure that not all of its grain gets exported away to China, but this will trigger counter measures eventually leading to the collapse of the World economy. Basicaly the problem is that if Saudi Arabia can't buy grain, why would they sell their oil? Because if they don't sell it somebody will take it away from them. The only reason they can sell it now is that the industrialized nations recognized it is cheaper to pretend the Saud's own the place and pay them off, than it is to occupy it. Brent -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On 9/16/2012 3:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Why does a physical system have to be non-invertible? My understanding is that current physical laws imply that systems are invertible. Hi Jason, Say hello to the problem of time. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On 9/16/2012 3:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Where is our universe located? What could its location be relative to? That question presupposes that there is a large universe that this one is embedded into and that it is possible to define both coordinate maps from different points of view that can map the two and distinguish them from each other. Where did the assumption of communicability come from here? AFAIK a universe is a closed system in the sense that any extension that we could add to it would be part of that universe, so the idea that there is a location of a universe does not make much sense to me. I was taking about the localizability of physical systems within a universe. I was presupposing the possibility of many locations that where capable of being considered as it could be there, let me look and see if it is indeed there... Okay. When I first saw you use the term physical system I thought you were referring to an entire universe rather than parts of one. Hi Jason, OK, that would make your point consistent, but what if we wish to talk about and make predictions of the behavior of parts of one? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On Sep 16, 2012, at 5:01 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/16/2012 3:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Where is our universe located? What could its location be relative to? That question presupposes that there is a large universe that this one is embedded into and that it is possible to define both coordinate maps from different points of view that can map the two and distinguish them from each other. Where did the assumption of communicability come from here? AFAIK a universe is a closed system in the sense that any extension that we could add to it would be part of that universe, so the idea that there is a location of a universe does not make much sense to me. I was taking about the localizability of physical systems within a universe. I was presupposing the possibility of many locations that where capable of being considered as it could be there, let me look and see if it is indeed there... Okay. When I first saw you use the term physical system I thought you were referring to an entire universe rather than parts of one. Hi Jason, OK, that would make your point consistent, but what if we wish to talk about and make predictions of the behavior of parts of one? That's what are physical theories are about. Jason -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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 . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On 9/16/2012 3:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Yes, but note that even in the case of a purely abstract mathematical universe, like a Hilbert space, we use a coordinate system and sets of maps to relate the relations of where things are in the space of the universe. Sure, but my point is that having relative locations, or being locatable is not some unique trait of physical objects (which is not found in any mathematical object). You said that a Turing machine must be physically realized somewhere to yield consciousness, so my question isWhat counts as a physical realization? Hi Jason, Anything that has a Hamiltonian or a Lagrangian or the equivalent and is subject to the laws of thermodynamics is a physical system in my book. If a given physical system has in its dynamics (the stuff that happens in the Hamiltonian or Lagrangian) that are functionally equivalent to a recursively enumerable function then it is a physical realization of a computation. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The poverty of computers
On 9/16/2012 3:12 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Sep 2012, at 13:36, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal All love, all truth, all beauty necessarily comes from God (Platonia's All). So if you can feel any of those, there's your experience. Yes. But with comp there is a sense to say that Satan can fail all finite creatures on this, and imitate God, so that we can be deluded, and so we have to be very vigilant with those matter. Art is a serious matter somehow. Platonia owns fatal beauties. Nobody knows in advance, we can only listen to the complains and reduce the harm. It is sad, perhaps, but we can't avoid them. Like math is full of chimera. Bruno Amen! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Prime Numbers
On 9/16/2012 3:43 PM, Rex Allen wrote: It seems to me that numbers are based on our ability to judge relative magnitudes: Which is bigger, which is closer, which is heavier, etc. Many animals have this ability - called numeracy. Humans differ only in the degree to which it is developed, and in our ability to build higher level abstractions on top of this fundamental skill. SO - prime numbers, I think, emerge from a peculiar characteristic of our ability to judge relative magnitudes, and the way this feeds into the abstractions we build on top of that ability. =*= Let’s say you take a board and divide it into 3 sections of equal length (say, by drawing a line on it at the section boundaries). Having done so – is there a way that you could have divided the board into fewer sections of equal length so that every endpoint of a long section can be matched to the end of a shorter section? In other words – take two boards of equal length. Divide one into 3 sections. Divide the other into two sections. The dividing point of the two-section-board will fall right into the middle of the middle section of the three-section-board. There is no way to divide the second board into fewer sections so that all of its dividing points are matched against a dividing point on the longer board. Because of this – three is a prime. (Notice that I do not say: “this is because 3 is prime” – instead I reverse the causal arrow). =*= Let’s take two boards and divide the first one into 10 equally sized sections. Now – there are two ways that we can divide the second board into a smaller number of equally sized sections so that the end-points of every section on this second board are matched to a sectional dividing point on the first board (though the opposite will not be true): We can divide the second board into either 2 sections (in which case the dividing point will align with the end of the 5th section on the first board), OR We can divide the second board into 5 sections – each of which is the same size as two sections on the first board. Because of this, the number 10 is not prime. =*= The entire field of Number Theory grows out of this peculiar characteristic of how we judge relative magnitudes. Do you think? HI Rex, Nice post! Could you riff a bit on what the number PHI tells us about this characteristic. How is it that it seems that our perceptions of the world find anything that is close to a PHI valued relationship to be beautiful? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On Sep 16, 2012, at 5:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/16/2012 3:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Why does a physical system have to be non-invertible? My understanding is that current physical laws imply that systems are invertible. Hi Jason, Say hello to the problem of time. What's the problem? Jason -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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 . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On 9/16/2012 6:11 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sep 16, 2012, at 5:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/16/2012 3:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Why does a physical system have to be non-invertible? My understanding is that current physical laws imply that systems are invertible. Hi Jason, Say hello to the problem of time. What's the problem? Jason Try this: http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2157 The Problem of Time in Quantum Gravity Edward Anderson http://arxiv.org/find/gr-qc/1/au:+Anderson_E/0/1/0/all/0/1 (Submitted on 11 Sep 2010 (v1 http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2157v1), last revised 20 Jul 2012 (this version, v3)) The problem of time in quantum gravity occurs because `time' is taken to have a different meaning in each of general relativity and ordinary quantum theory. This incompatibility creates serious problems with trying to replace these two branches of physics with a single framework in regimes in which neither quantum theory nor general relativity can be neglected, such as in black holes or in the very early universe. Strategies for resolving the Problem of Time have evolved somewhat since Kuchar and Isham's well-known reviews from the early 90's. These come in the following divisions I) time before quantization, such as hidden time or matter time. II) Time after quantization, such as emergent semiclassical time. III) Timeless strategies of Type 1: naive Schrodinger interpretation, conditional probabilities interpretation and various forms of records theories, and Type 2 `Rovelli': in terms of evolving constants of the motion, complete observables and partial observables. IV) I argue for histories theories to be a separate class of strategy. Additionally, various combinations of these strategies have begun to appear in the literature; I discuss a number of such. Finally, I comment on loop quantum gravity, supergravity and string/M-theory from the problem of time perspective. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: science only works with half a brain
On 9/16/2012 6:11 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sep 16, 2012, at 5:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/16/2012 3:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Why does a physical system have to be non-invertible? My understanding is that current physical laws imply that systems are invertible. Hi Jason, Say hello to the problem of time. What's the problem? Jason This is good too and not so full of math: http://www.edge.org/discourse/kauffman_smolin.html -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Prime Numbers
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: HI Rex, Nice post! Could you riff a bit on what the number PHI tells us about this characteristic. How is it that it seems that our perceptions of the world find anything that is close to a PHI valued relationship to be beautiful? Thanks Stephen! Actually my initial example of numeracy isn't quite right, but it's not important to the rest of the argument. My main point is that you can get to the concept of prime numbers just using relative magnitudes that we have an innate sense of. As for the significance of PHI - well - I guess there's probably some plausible sounding evolutionary story that could be told about that. Though how satisfying or useful an explanation like that is just depends on what you're after and what your interests are. An explanation that might be useful in one context might be useless in some other context. Explanations are observer dependent. Probably. Rex -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
