Materialism
Materialism is the philosophy that chaos is prevented in the universe without overall governance. Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/9/2013 http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Thursday, April 4, 2013 12:55:44 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:32 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: There are, of course, undiscovered scientific facts. If scientists did not believe that they would give up science. But Craig is not saying that there are processes inside cells that are controlled by as yet undiscovered physical effects. What he is saying is that if I decide to move my arm the arm will move not due to the well-studied sequence of neurological events, but spontaneously, due to my will. UGH. No. I say that if I move my arm, the arm will move because I AM whatever sequence of events on whatever level - molecular, biochemical, physiological, whether well-studied or not. You may not be able to understand that what I intend is not to squeeze myself into biology, or to magically replace biology, but to present that the entirety of the physics of my body intersects with the entirety of the physics of my experience. The two aesthetics - public bodies in space and private experiences through time, are an involuted (Ouroboran, umbilical, involuted) Monism. If you don't understand what that means then you are arguing with a straw man. If you ARE the sequence of neurological events and the neurological events follow deterministic or probabilistic rules then you will also follow deterministic or probabilistic rules. That's a tautology. If I move my arm, then I am causing improbable neurological events to occur. Muscles, cells, molecules follow my intention rather than their own. The cells are not causing my arm to move - if they were, that would be a spasm. However, you don't believe that this is the case. So sometimes there must be neurological events which are spontaneous according to your definition - outside the normal causal chain. Spontaneous *IS* the normal causality. It isn't a 'chain'. The entire body and brain serve a single purpose - to support a particular quality of participatory experience. If it is not doing that, then the person is dead or in a coma. Unconsciousness is your causal chain. Consciousness is intentional self-modification of causality itself. Absent this, you return to the default scientific position. The default scientific position is that particles decay after a random duration (i.e. spontaneous), making each event in the cosmos subject to non-deterministic and unique outcomes. Determinism is an approximate view from a great distance. This is what Multisense Realism specifically suggests: Perceptual relativity based on sense attenuation as the sole universal principle. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Why do particles decay randomly?
If any particle were truly identical to another, then they could not decay at different rates. While we see this as random (aka spontaneous to our eyes), there is nothing to say that the duration of the life of the particle is not influenced by intentional dispositions. Particles may represent different intensities of 'will to continue' or expectation of persistence. In this sense, organic molecules could represent a Goldilocks range of time-entangled panpsychism which is particularly flexible and dynamic. Think of the lifetime of a molecular ensemble as the length of a word in a sentence as it relates to the possibilities of meaning. Too long and it becomes unwieldy, too brief and it becomes generic. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: NDE's Proved Real?
On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:13 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: What I'm trying to say is that I believe you do not distinguish: A) Science the method of inquiry from B) Science the human institution And I am saying is you do not understand that only one of the following is true: A) Science can sometimes make predictions better than the law of averages would allow. B) Science is the only way to make predictions better than the law of averages would allow. Assuming we can agree that only A is true, why do you assume I don't understand that? And what's your point? And it is physically impossible for me to personally perform every experiment that I'd like to, so I have no choice but to look to the human institution of science to help me out, but that would be useless to me unless I have reason to trust that the experiment was actually performed as described, Agreed. and that's where the web of trust comes in that you get from journals like Nature and Science. The web of trust comes from PhDs from accredited Universities. That is the deal that everyone accepts. The Nature/Science restriction is a bizarre extreme that I have never hear anyone profess apart from you. Nature/Science have no magical powers to verify if experiments were performed correctly. Their target is research with generic appeal. A lot of good research does not get published there because it's in a very specific niche. Most of the articles I read are not from Science or Nature, because they do not cater sufficiently (by any stretch of the imagination) to my niches. It's not worse or less credible. I still don't think you understand what Science/Nature are. When I read about some shit that somebody I've never heard of typed onto a obscure part of the internet that I've also never heard of about This is getting tiresome, but I feel you should not get away with repeating this lie. It's also very nasty towards a lot of people that worked hard on honest research. It took them years of their lives to produce that research. It takes you 30 sec to attack their characters gratuitously. Maybe this research is wrong or flawed. Maybe it is dishonest. That's always a possibility. Nobody has magical powers to prevent that. You really like status, that's all. About PLoS: - PageRank 8/10 - Wikipedia page in 12 languages - Citation index 4 (way way above average) - Nobel laureates yada yada (and no, they don't send them trivial notes. They send them real articles about real shit like curing AIDS) - Listed in 14 major scientific databases including PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science It turns out that NYTimes just published an article about pseudo-academia: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html Here's what they have to say about PLoS: Open access got its start about a decade ago and quickly won widespread acclaim with the advent of well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals like those published by the Public Library of Science, known as PLoS. Such articles were listed in databases like PubMed, which is maintained by the National Library of Medicine, and selected for their quality. This is not an obscure website by any stretch of the imagination. Or maybe NY Times is also an obscure website, I don't know. revolutionary experimental results that would change everything if true No they would not. You didn't even read the article. It's about weird cognitive phenomena that take place when you're about to die. That's all. They don't draw any extraordinary conclusions. There are no ghosts or life after death claims. But they point at stuff that cannot really be explained by current theory. There's a lot of stuff like that. People that follow the science of religion instead of being actually scientific like to ignore these things, including their own consciousness -- the only thing they can really be sure about. Another thing is that we don't really need to maintain a perfect network of binary beliefs in our heads. We can entertain conflicting possibilities. Our brains are equipped to deal with that. I suspect creativity becomes impossible if you don't allow for this. there is no web of trust and thus I am not in the least impressed because I know how to type too. You will be a whole lot happier if your worry less about impressing and being impressed. Cheers Telmo. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Re: NDE's Proved Real?
On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comwrote: Nature/Science have no magical powers to verify if experiments were performed correctly. Like anything else they are not perfect and are subject to error from time to time, but I can't think of any other human institution that has a better track record, their judgement has stood the test of time remarkably well. A lot of good research does not get published there because it's in a very specific niche. To me Very specific niche sounds a lot like not very important. Could the editors make a mistake about what is important and what is not? Sure. Looking back with the perspective that time gives you have the editors made a lot of mistakes about what is important and what is not? No. Most of the articles I read are not from Science or Nature, because they do not cater sufficiently (by any stretch of the imagination) to my niches. So is your niche interest like after death or flying saucers or ESP or cold fusion or perpetual motion or Atlantis? It's also very nasty towards a lot of people that worked hard on honest research. It took them years of their lives to produce that research. I don't care how hard they worked on it I only care if it's right. Blondlot worked hard on N rays and Pons and Fleishman worked hard on cold fusion but that didn't prevent their work being crap. And none of their crap was published in Nature or Science by the way. You didn't even read the article. True and I have no intention of doing so. Many thousands of scientific articles are published every month and I have time to read only a very few of them and I don't see why one of them should be from PLoS when there are thousands of articles in hundreds of journals that are almost certainly of higher quality. People that follow the science of religion instead of being actually scientific Wow, calling a guy known for not liking religion religious! Never heard that one before, at least not before the sixth grade. like to ignore these things, including their own consciousness I wouldn't know how to ignore my consciousness even if I wanted to, however it is true that I don't like to talk about consciousness a lot because I have much much more wisdom on this subject than most on this list; I know that I have nothing new or interesting to say about consciousness but most people around here mistakenly believe that they do. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On 05 Apr 2013, at 11:17, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 1:09 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/4/2013 3:50 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 10:44 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Then shouldn't a powerful computer be able to quickly deduce the winning Arimaa mappings? You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Another point toward Telmo's suspicion that learning is complex: If learning and thinking intelligently at a human level were computationally easy, biology wouldn't have evolved to use trillions of synapses. The brain is very expensive metabolically (using 20 - 25% of the total body's energy, about 100 Watts). If so many neurons were not needed to do what we do, natural selection would have selected those humans with fewer neurons and reduced food requirements. Yes but one can imagine a situation where there is a simple (sufficiently-)general purpose algorithm that needs some place where to store memories and everything it has learned. In this case, we could implement such an algorithm in one of our puny laptops and get some results, and then just ride what's left of Moore's law all the way to the singularity. We don't know of any such algorithm. But it doesn't follow from human brain complexity that no such algorithm exists. Evolution doesn't necessarily do things efficiently. Because it can't start-over, it always depends on modification of what already works. But I think there are other theoretical and evolutionary reasons that would limit the scope of general intelligence. Just to take an example, mathematics is very hard for a lot of people. Mathematical thinking is not something that has been evolutionarily useful until recent times (and maybe not even now). Agreed. What puzzles me the most is not that evolution hasn't found it (although we're not sure, there's a lot we don't know about the brain still). It's that the swarm of smart people that have been looking for it haven't found it. I still have some hope that it's simple but highly counter-intuitive. All recursively enumerable class of total computable function is learnable. There is a simple algorithm: dovetail on that class, and output the programs which match the data. This will converge (in the computer science sense = eventually output something correct) to a program explaining the input-outputs given. That algorithm will already not work if they are strictly partial function in the class, and it will not work on non recursively enumerable class (like all total functions). Such an algorithm is of course not really a practical algorithm, but they can be accelerated, --- even more so, if we allow weakening of the identification criteria. Some previews knowledge and rule of thumbs can also accelerate them, with non computable (= huge) gain. The field of theoretical learning is very rich, and leads to the idea that competence is something never really universal, quite domain dependent, and speedable when allowing the usual things that evolution exploited all the time: the making of error, randomness, team or swarm of machines, etc. It leads to a large variety of possible implementation of competence, and exploits maximally the high general intelligence which exists already in the any universal machine. But as I said, such high competence can also restrict that intelligence. Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence tends to make that intelligence blind. With language and culture, that blindness can pass from a generation to another, so that babies can became more quickly stubborn than without, until the next paradigm shift. Bruno Telmo. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Re: The world is in the brain
On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. Bruno Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: NDE's Proved Real?
On 05 Apr 2013, at 21:39, John Mikes wrote: I think I side with Craig: NDE is not N enough, is not D because the 'observer' (gossiper?) came back and not E - rather a compendium of hearsay (s)he stored previously about D-like phenomena. When a (human or other) complexity dissolves (= death) nobody comes back to tell the stories. This comes from a 'participant' and long time partner in OUIJA-board sessions of honest friends. I still cannot explain those miraculous experiences (saved my life once) coming allegedly from 'dead' benefactors I knew before they died. I do not support the reference to the BIG journals (had ~100 publications, some in such, then was editor of a 'smaller' one) - it is 'click-stuff' and refereed by well selected (opinionated) scientists mostly. I agree. impact factor and big name leads to self-sustained argument per authority. However the reference to the Nobel prize lost its credibility e.g. with certain (peace)Prize assignment going to a war-monger politician. I agree very much. Despite I was inclined to believe that Obama might make some progressive change, I find absurd to give a price before seeing him doing anything. I will ask for the Nobel prize in medicine and I will promised to the work after :) Since then Obama has signed the NDAA bill, which is a mysterious frightening fact, and since he is in power, he has killed many civilians by using the drones in an unprecedented manner, may be there should be something like a withdrawal of price (that happened to me, BTW!). Even in sciences it occurred that hypothetical and fantasy-based ideas were awarded the Prize Indeed. But that's OK. Big genius are the one saying big stupidities. (e.g. circumstances of the Big Bang etc.). Not to mention the questionable lit. What does an agnostic like myself believe? that we don't know 'it'. Some non-toxic and non-addictive drugs provokes NDE or alike. Anyone, with a few practice, can see by itself. I have a theory that salvia might go farer, and be a genuine DEAD experience. You have the choice to stay there, and they send a copy of you on earth. This does not contradict comp, because the copy, despite being fully conscious all the time, get your memory back slowly, so that the copy feels becoming you, but you can see your original self staying there. This is frequent in the salvia reports (the copy effect, or the max effect as I call it in the entheogen.net forum). With comp the NDE is predictable, and the logic G and G* can be described as the logic of the near inconsistency state, which is the normal logic of the self-referentially correct machine (there are cul- de-sac accessible from any state). In a sense, life is a near death experience all along. What is still amazing, and might contradict comp, is that we can live NDE or DE and come back with some realist memories of the event. The crash investigation reports gives interesting reports on third person person NDE. You can see the beneficial effect on some people. Good to stay agnostic. The fun consists in trying theories and testing them, not in taking any of them as a truth, ever. Bruno John M On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:56 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Dull in what way? Dull in the way that reading what some Bozo I've never heard of typed onto a obscure website about experimental results that would revolutionize not just science but the entire world if true are dull. You didn't read the article I guess I have not read it nor do I intend to; let me know when something like that shows up in Science or Nature or Physical Review letters. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group,
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On 05 Apr 2013, at 16:16, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, April 5, 2013 9:41:40 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 05 Apr 2013, at 00:07, Craig Weinberg wrote (to Jason) There are algorithms for implementing anything that does not involve infinities. Why do you think so? What algorithm implements purple or pain? What make you think that purple or pain don't involve infinities? They might, but why does that make a difference? (Also, many algorithm does involve infinities. Machines can provide name for ordinals up to the Church-Kleene omega_1^CK ordinal, and they can reason in ZF like any of us. I don't see why computers cannot beat the humans in the naming of infinities, even if that task can be considered as the least algorithmic one ever conceived by humans). Why do you think that purple is a name? Why do you think I would think that purple is a name? Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Free-Will discussion
On 06 Apr 2013, at 01:51, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already are aware of the relevant aspects of your brain function, and aware of them in a way which is a million times more detailed than any fMRI could ever be. No, you bet on them. You are not aware of your brain, in any direct way. Some antic believed consciousness comes from the liver. That consciousness is related to a brain is a theory, there are only evidence, we cannot experience any theory. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On 05 Apr 2013, at 16:30, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 8:41 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 05 Apr 2013, at 00:07, Craig Weinberg wrote (to Jason) There are algorithms for implementing anything that does not involve infinities. Why do you think so? What algorithm implements purple or pain? What make you think that purple or pain don't involve infinities? (Also, many algorithm does involve infinities. Machines can provide name for ordinals up to the Church-Kleene omega_1^CK ordinal, and they can reason in ZF like any of us. I don't see why computers cannot beat the humans in the naming of infinities, even if that task can be considered as the least algorithmic one ever conceived by humans). I should clarify what I meant by infinities. I meant there are algorithms that for computing anything that can be solved which does not require an infinite number of steps or infinite precision to do so. So unless infinite precision or infinite steps are required to emulate brain behavior, a computer should be capable of expressing all outwardly visisble behaviors any human can. (Craig has disputed this point before) OK, I guessed so. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: NDE's Proved Real?
On 06 Apr 2013, at 06:38, Richard Ruquist wrote: There is no hell Ah? In which theory? You derive this from CY? In which theology? What is your definition of hell? Bruno On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, April 5, 2013 3:39:52 PM UTC-4, JohnM wrote: I think I side with Craig: NDE is not N enough, is not D because the 'observer' (gossiper?) came back and not E - rather a compendium of hearsay (s)he stored previously about D-like phenomena. When a (human or other) complexity dissolves (= death) nobody comes back to tell the stories. This comes from a 'participant' and long time partner in OUIJA-board sessions of honest friends. I still cannot explain those miraculous experiences (saved my life once) coming allegedly from 'dead' benefactors I knew before they died. Someone brought a OUIJA board to school in fourth grade and I was using it with a friend. Unimpressed, another fourth girl that neither of us knew very well said we should ask a question that nobody would know. She asked what the name of her bird was. As the word LANCELOT was spelled out, she was dumbstruck. This was a very studious 10 year old Asian girl in a highly gifted program - we covered a lot of science in class and I think it is safe to say that she was scientifically oriented. If she had some secret pact with the girl I was doing the board with, she certainly didn't seem very happy about it and she didn't seem like a very good actress. She seemed confused and worried and did not want any more to do with the board. Craig I do not support the reference to the BIG journals (had ~100 publications, some in such, then was editor of a 'smaller' one) - it is 'click-stuff' and refereed by well selected (opinionated) scientists mostly. However the reference to the Nobel prize lost its credibility e.g. with certain (peace)Prize assignment going to a war- monger politician. Even in sciences it occurred that hypothetical and fantasy-based ideas were awarded the Prize (e.g. circumstances of the Big Bang etc.). Not to mention the questionable lit. What does an agnostic like myself believe? that we don't know 'it'. John M On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:56 PM, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: Dull in what way? Dull in the way that reading what some Bozo I've never heard of typed onto a obscure website about experimental results that would revolutionize not just science but the entire world if true are dull. You didn't read the article I guess I have not read it nor do I intend to; let me know when something like that shows up in Science or Nature or Physical Review letters. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Monday, April 8, 2013 5:38:44 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. If we used a logic automata type of scheme, then mind and brain would be the same thing. Each bit would be an atomic configuration, and programs would be atomic assemblies. Maybe this makes it easier to see why forms and functions are not the same as sensory experiences, as no pile of logic automata would inspire feelings, flavors, thoughts, etc. but would output behaviors consistent with our expectations for those experiences. Craig Bruno Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 08.04.2013 11:38 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. I guess, this is a way how science develops. Neuroscientists study brain and they just take a priori from the materialist and reductionism paradigm that mind must be in the brain. After that, they write papers to bring this idea to the logical conclusion. To this end, they seem to have two options. Either they should say that the 3D visual world is illusion (I guess, Dennett goes this way) or put phenomenological consciousness into the brain. Let us see what happens along this way. The paper in a way is well written. The only flaw (that actually is irrelevant to the content of the paper) that I have seen in it, is THE ENTROPY. Biologists like the entropy so much that they use it in any occasion. For example from the paper: “Thus, changes in entropy provide an important window into self-organization: a sudden increase of entropy just before the emergence of a new structure, followed by brief period of negative entropy (or negentropy).” I have seen that this could be traced to Schrödinger’s What is Life?, reread his chapter on Order, Disorder and Entropy and made my comments http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2013/04/schrodinger-disorder-and-entropy.html Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: NDE's Proved Real?
On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 7:44 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Nature/Science have no magical powers to verify if experiments were performed correctly. Like anything else they are not perfect and are subject to error from time to time, but I can't think of any other human institution that has a better track record, their judgement has stood the test of time remarkably well. That's terribly hard to verify, partly because the datasets are proprietary and cost a huge amount of money. I have a friend who works in scientometrics and he got a 1 million dollar grant just to buy full access to the abstract repositories. That's one of the problems that open access aims to address. But I bet you're right. There's place for different levels of caution. Nature/Science go for the highly conservative and highly generalist range. They are valuable, but if only this range existed a lot of good stuff would get thrown away with the bath water. A lot of good research does not get published there because it's in a very specific niche. To me Very specific niche sounds a lot like not very important. Could the editors make a mistake about what is important and what is not? Sure. Looking back with the perspective that time gives you have the editors made a lot of mistakes about what is important and what is not? No. That's just silly. Things are built on top of other things. For example, I'm interested in evolutionary computation. Evolutionary computation can be used to address a number of problems, for example protein folding. Maybe amazing new drugs will be developed using this technique. That will be a result with generic appeal that will probably be published in Nature. Meanwhile this was made possible by people toiling on uncountable variations and details of evolutionary computation that are of little interest to people outside the field. Should the evolutionary computation people decide that they are losers and give up because most of their work is not very important? Most of the articles I read are not from Science or Nature, because they do not cater sufficiently (by any stretch of the imagination) to my niches. So is your niche interest like after death or flying saucers or ESP or cold fusion or perpetual motion or Atlantis? No. I'm a bit scattered but I work with evolutionary computation (mostly genetic programming), complex network analysis and more recently knowledge graphs and NLP. It's also very nasty towards a lot of people that worked hard on honest research. It took them years of their lives to produce that research. I don't care how hard they worked on it I only care if it's right. Blondlot worked hard on N rays and Pons and Fleishman worked hard on cold fusion but that didn't prevent their work being crap. The problem with labels like crap is that it leads to public shaming of people who try something weird. They were wrong, that's all. And none of their crap was published in Nature or Science by the way. Indeed, it was rejected by people who read the articles. You didn't even read the article. True and I have no intention of doing so. Many thousands of scientific articles are published every month and I have time to read only a very few of them and I don't see why one of them should be from PLoS when there are thousands of articles in hundreds of journals that are almost certainly of higher quality. Cool, we all have our heuristics. But then it's irrational to express a strong opinion about something of which you know nothing. People that follow the science of religion instead of being actually scientific Wow, calling a guy known for not liking religion religious! Never heard that one before, at least not before the sixth grade. like to ignore these things, including their own consciousness I wouldn't know how to ignore my consciousness even if I wanted to, however it is true that I don't like to talk about consciousness a lot because I have much much more wisdom on this subject than most on this list; I know that I have nothing new or interesting to say about consciousness but most people around here mistakenly believe that they do. Maybe. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To
Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
It is hard to answer this question precisely, because the large, radioactive nuclei are very complex structures, for which exact solutions of Schroedinger's equation cannot be obtained. Rather these things are usually studied via Hartree-Fock approximations. However, in loose visual terms, you can think of a neutron as being in a superposition of states, some of which are an electron-proton pair separated by a substantial distance. If the electron finds itself too far from its partner proton, the weak force is too weak, and the electric force is shielded by the orbital electrons, so the electron escapes, becoming the beta ray. This explanation has left out an obvious factor - an anti-neutrino must also be created as part of the process. This is often explained as being required to preserve lepton number - but conservation of lepton number is a somewhat ad hoc law - I don't know the real physical reason why lepton number is conserved. Anyway, the point of randomness is that this is a quintessential quantum process, very closely related to the phenomenon of quantum tunneling. Unless there exists a hidden variable-type theory underlying QM (which basically appears to be ruled out by Bell+Aspect), the process must be completely random. Cheers On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 05:57:11AM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: If any particle were truly identical to another, then they could not decay at different rates. While we see this as random (aka spontaneous to our eyes), there is nothing to say that the duration of the life of the particle is not influenced by intentional dispositions. Particles may represent different intensities of 'will to continue' or expectation of persistence. In this sense, organic molecules could represent a Goldilocks range of time-entangled panpsychism which is particularly flexible and dynamic. Think of the lifetime of a molecular ensemble as the length of a word in a sentence as it relates to the possibilities of meaning. Too long and it becomes unwieldy, too brief and it becomes generic. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
On Tuesday, April 9, 2013 7:54:27 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote: It is hard to answer this question precisely, because the large, radioactive nuclei are very complex structures, for which exact solutions of Schroedinger's equation cannot be obtained. Rather these things are usually studied via Hartree-Fock approximations. However, in loose visual terms, you can think of a neutron as being in a superposition of states, some of which are an electron-proton pair separated by a substantial distance. If the electron finds itself too far from its partner proton, the weak force is too weak, and the electric force is shielded by the orbital electrons, so the electron escapes, becoming the beta ray. This explanation has left out an obvious factor - an anti-neutrino must also be created as part of the process. This is often explained as being required to preserve lepton number - but conservation of lepton number is a somewhat ad hoc law - I don't know the real physical reason why lepton number is conserved. Anyway, the point of randomness is that this is a quintessential quantum process, very closely related to the phenomenon of quantum tunneling. Unless there exists a hidden variable-type theory underlying QM (which basically appears to be ruled out by Bell+Aspect), the process must be completely random. I wonder if we looked at the behavior of cars driving on the highway, would we conclude that the variation in how long they travel before exiting the highway must be completely random? Maybe the hidden variable is that matter knows what it is doing? Craig Cheers On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 05:57:11AM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: If any particle were truly identical to another, then they could not decay at different rates. While we see this as random (aka spontaneous to our eyes), there is nothing to say that the duration of the life of the particle is not influenced by intentional dispositions. Particles may represent different intensities of 'will to continue' or expectation of persistence. In this sense, organic molecules could represent a Goldilocks range of time-entangled panpsychism which is particularly flexible and dynamic. Think of the lifetime of a molecular ensemble as the length of a word in a sentence as it relates to the possibilities of meaning. Too long and it becomes unwieldy, too brief and it becomes generic. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Why do particles decay randomly?
Colin's Wackier Version: Because the space they operate in, at the scale in which the decay operates, there are far more dimensions than 3. They decay deterministically in 3D and it appears, to us, to be random because of the collapse of the spatial dimensions to 3, where we humble observers gain access to it. Same reason atoms jiggle in space. Same reason an electron is fuzzy. Smoothness in 3D looks fuzzy to us. Quantum mechanics is a statistical description that is predictive in 3D. It explains nothing. I offer explanation, not description. :) From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Wednesday, 10 April 2013 1:19 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Why do particles decay randomly? On Tuesday, April 9, 2013 7:54:27 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote: It is hard to answer this question precisely, because the large, radioactive nuclei are very complex structures, for which exact solutions of Schroedinger's equation cannot be obtained. Rather these things are usually studied via Hartree-Fock approximations. However, in loose visual terms, you can think of a neutron as being in a superposition of states, some of which are an electron-proton pair separated by a substantial distance. If the electron finds itself too far from its partner proton, the weak force is too weak, and the electric force is shielded by the orbital electrons, so the electron escapes, becoming the beta ray. This explanation has left out an obvious factor - an anti-neutrino must also be created as part of the process. This is often explained as being required to preserve lepton number - but conservation of lepton number is a somewhat ad hoc law - I don't know the real physical reason why lepton number is conserved. Anyway, the point of randomness is that this is a quintessential quantum process, very closely related to the phenomenon of quantum tunneling. Unless there exists a hidden variable-type theory underlying QM (which basically appears to be ruled out by Bell+Aspect), the process must be completely random. I wonder if we looked at the behavior of cars driving on the highway, would we conclude that the variation in how long they travel before exiting the highway must be completely random? Maybe the hidden variable is that matter knows what it is doing? Craig Cheers On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 05:57:11AM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: If any particle were truly identical to another, then they could not decay at different rates. While we see this as random (aka spontaneous to our eyes), there is nothing to say that the duration of the life of the particle is not influenced by intentional dispositions. Particles may represent different intensities of 'will to continue' or expectation of persistence. In this sense, organic molecules could represent a Goldilocks range of time-entangled panpsychism which is particularly flexible and dynamic. Think of the lifetime of a molecular ensemble as the length of a word in a sentence as it relates to the possibilities of meaning. Too long and it becomes unwieldy, too brief and it becomes generic. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.commailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.commailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit
Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
Actually, this idea is not as wacky as you're suggesting. Laurent Nottale suggested something like this with his Fractal Spacetime theory, essentially explaining standard QM geometrically as a projection from a higher dimension Hausdorf space (fractal dimension). His ideas haven't gained traction, alas - not because they've been proven wrong, as I understand - he just seems to have been ignored by the mainstream. Cheers On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 04:04:14AM +, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Colin's Wackier Version: Because the space they operate in, at the scale in which the decay operates, there are far more dimensions than 3. They decay deterministically in 3D and it appears, to us, to be random because of the collapse of the spatial dimensions to 3, where we humble observers gain access to it. Same reason atoms jiggle in space. Same reason an electron is fuzzy. Smoothness in 3D looks fuzzy to us. Quantum mechanics is a statistical description that is predictive in 3D. It explains nothing. I offer explanation, not description. :) From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Wednesday, 10 April 2013 1:19 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Why do particles decay randomly? On Tuesday, April 9, 2013 7:54:27 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote: It is hard to answer this question precisely, because the large, radioactive nuclei are very complex structures, for which exact solutions of Schroedinger's equation cannot be obtained. Rather these things are usually studied via Hartree-Fock approximations. However, in loose visual terms, you can think of a neutron as being in a superposition of states, some of which are an electron-proton pair separated by a substantial distance. If the electron finds itself too far from its partner proton, the weak force is too weak, and the electric force is shielded by the orbital electrons, so the electron escapes, becoming the beta ray. This explanation has left out an obvious factor - an anti-neutrino must also be created as part of the process. This is often explained as being required to preserve lepton number - but conservation of lepton number is a somewhat ad hoc law - I don't know the real physical reason why lepton number is conserved. Anyway, the point of randomness is that this is a quintessential quantum process, very closely related to the phenomenon of quantum tunneling. Unless there exists a hidden variable-type theory underlying QM (which basically appears to be ruled out by Bell+Aspect), the process must be completely random. I wonder if we looked at the behavior of cars driving on the highway, would we conclude that the variation in how long they travel before exiting the highway must be completely random? Maybe the hidden variable is that matter knows what it is doing? Craig Cheers On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 05:57:11AM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: If any particle were truly identical to another, then they could not decay at different rates. While we see this as random (aka spontaneous to our eyes), there is nothing to say that the duration of the life of the particle is not influenced by intentional dispositions. Particles may represent different intensities of 'will to continue' or expectation of persistence. In this sense, organic molecules could represent a Goldilocks range of time-entangled panpsychism which is particularly flexible and dynamic. Think of the lifetime of a molecular ensemble as the length of a word in a sentence as it relates to the possibilities of meaning. Too long and it becomes unwieldy, too brief and it becomes generic. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.commailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to
Re: The world is in the brain
On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 08.04.2013 11:38 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. I guess, this is a way how science develops. Neuroscientists study brain and they just take a priori from the materialist and reductionism paradigm that mind must be in the brain. The materialist view is just that the mind is a process in the brain, like a computation is the process of running a program in a computer. As processes they may be abstracted from their physical instantiation and are not anywhere, except maybe in Platonia. After that, they write papers to bring this idea to the logical conclusion. To this end, they seem to have two options. Either they should say that the 3D visual world is illusion (I guess, Dennett goes this way) I think illusion has too strong a connotation of fallacious. I think model is more accurate. So long as we realize the world we conceptualize is a model then we are not guilty of a fallacy. or put phenomenological consciousness into the brain. I don't know what this means. That phenomenological consciousness depends on the brain is empirically well established. But to put it into the brain implies making a spatial placement of an abstract concept. Let us see what happens along this way. The paper in a way is well written. The only flaw (that actually is irrelevant to the content of the paper) that I have seen in it, is THE ENTROPY. Biologists like the entropy so much that they use it in any occasion. For example from the paper: “Thus, changes in entropy provide an important window into self-organization: a sudden increase of entropy just before the emergence of a new structure, followed by brief period of negative entropy (or negentropy).” I have seen that this could be traced to Schrödinger’s What is Life?, reread his chapter on Order, Disorder and Entropy and made my comments http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2013/04/schrodinger-disorder-and-entropy.html Still tilting at that windmill? A) From thermodynamic tables, the mole entropy of silver at standard conditions S(Ag, cr) = 42.55 J K-1 mol-1 is bigger than that of aluminum S(Al, cr) = 28.30 J K-1 mol-1. Does it mean that there is more disorder in silver as in aluminium? Yes, there is more disorder in the sense that raising the temperature of a mole of Ag 1deg increases the number of accessible conduction electron states available more than does raising the temperature of a mole of Al does. I agree that disorder is not necessarily a good metaphor for entropy. But dispersal of energy isn't always intuitively equal to entropy either. Consider dissolving ammonium nitrate in water. The process is endothermic, so the temperature drops and energy is absorbed, but the process goes spontaneously because the entropy increases; the are a lot more microstates accessible in the solution even at the lower temperature. Your quote of Arnheim makes me suspect that *he* is one who has confounded our language. Receiving information reduces uncertainty; it doesn't necessarily increase order. Chaos and unpredictability and information do not carry a maximum of information. What they do is allow for a maximum increase of information when they are resolved. Disorder doesn't provide information - it provides the opportunity for using information, just as ignorance of what a message will be is a measure of how much information the message will contain when it removes the ignorance. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this
