Re: Losing Control

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:03:51 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Craig Weinberg 
>> wrote:
>>
>> >> 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.
>>
>> Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from
>> conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow
>> the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love.
>
>
> If that were so, then neuroscientists would not need to ask me to move my
> arm, they would simply predict when I think I am moving my arm.

And after that they would predict the lottery numbers.

>> "Your
>> intentions" are the result of the activity in your brain. "Your
>> intentions" do not cause any magical top-down effects.
>
>
> The only magic is the idea that activity in my brain knows about anything
> other than activity in my brain. The fact that both of us are now
> manipulating our own brain chemistry, striated muscle tissue, fingertips,
> and keyboard from the top-down is indisputably obvious. Your brain doesn't
> dictate what you will say or do - it is your personal experience which
> shapes your brain activity at least as much as your experience is shaped by
> it.

A top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level
seemingly magically. If it is all consistent with physics then it
isn't a top-down effect. Again and again I bring this up and you say
that I misrepresent you, that I haven't understood your theory, while
it is you who have not understood the meaning of your own words.

>> But there is no evidence of a breach in the normal chain of causality
>> in the brain or anywhere else. Don't you think it should be obvious
>> somewhere after centuries of biological research?
>
>
> I can't help it that you are incapable of understanding my argument. I have
> addressed your straw man many times already.

I am trying to explain to you that you are contradicting yourself. If
you agree that the brain functions consistently with physical laws
then you have to to agree that consciousness does not directly affect
brain behaviour, since there is no place for consciousness in chemical
equations. This is not to say that consciousness does not exist or is
not important, just that it is not directly or separately or top-down
causally efficacious.

> I think that the current scientific position is likely a kind of delusional
> convulsion. a post traumatic nostalgic compensation for the revelations of
> the 20th century. There is no such thing as probability in physics, only an
> appearance of such from a partially informed perspective. There is nothing
> any more classical about biology than there is anything else, as
> photosynthesis already shows quantum effects.
>
> http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/09/quantum-coherence-in-photosynthesis/
>
> Hey, look what else has quantum effects in biology:
>
> http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/10/quantum-effects-in-ion-channels/

You do realise that quantum level effect are crucially important in
the operation of the semiconductors in computers?


-- 
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.

Re: The world is in the brain

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:38:46 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 4/10/2013 3:26 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>  
>
>
> On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:08:31 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>  On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>  
>> Hi Telmo,
>>
>>  Yes, those are good counter examples. 
>>
>>  But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." 
>> is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If 
>> evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? 
>> �
>>
>>  Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are 
>> mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those 
>> nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle 
>> pressure? �You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but 
>> then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result 
>> in different characters of experience.
>>
>>
>> You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to 
>> evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it 
>> quickly and exclaim to warn others.� People that don't suffer 
>> reproductive disadvantage.
>>  
>
> That's begging the question. People would withdraw their hand with the 
> exact same rapidity regardless of the aesthetic quality of the signal. 
>
>
> No, that's answering the question.  Whatever aesthetic quality causes one 
> to quickly withdraw and warn other is the answer to "What aesthetic quality 
> is pain?"
>

How could an aesthetic quality cause one to do anything if "one" has no 
effective free will? If you can't explain aesthetic quality in term of ion 
channels and brain activity then you must be talking about magic.
 

>
>  Terren and I understand this, and we understand that your view does not 
> understand this. 
>
>
> You use "understand" as a synonym for "assert".  Your "understanding" has 
> no predictive power and is not consilient with other science.
>

The only assertion I make is that you are wasting your time trying to 
convince us that you're right when we can both see that you don't 
understand why you are wrong, and also why you think we're wrong.


>  In a deterministic universe, there is no need to motivate stones to roll 
> down hill. You can't remove all causal efficacy from will on one hand and 
> then rely on it to justify aesthetics on the other. 
>
>
> I'm not the one relying on will - you are.
>

"People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly" 

Why does this behavior occur as a consequence of some sensory experience 
rather than simple mechanics? If pain makes me withdraw my hand, it can 
only be because my will contributes to my hand's movements. Otherwise the 
pain feeling would be irrelevant as I would be a spectator and my will 
would be an illusion. 

 

>
>  It doesn't work, and even if it did, it doesn't answer Terren's 
> question: "how did it do that? By what mechanism?". Does evolution simply 
> conjure "pain" from a magical box of infinite experiences, or are there 
> some rules in place as to their nature? 
>  
>
> I gave the rules - that's why it's an answer.
>

Translation - you have no answer except to try to confuse the question.

Craig
 

>
> Brent
>
>  
> Craig
>  
>  
>>  
>> 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-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.
>  
>  
>
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2013.0.3272 / Virus Database: 3162/6236 - Release Date: 04/10/13
>
>
> 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Scientific journals

[Russell Standish]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 01:18:06PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> 
> > The policy I'm referring to (editorial rejection based on perceived
> > interest or status) seems likely to be a reaction to the very "junk
> > science" problem you mention.
> >
> 
> I don't know what that means.
> 
> > What I am saying is in this wired world, where journal space is not a
> > scarce resource, papers should only be rejected for obvious scientific
> > reasons
> 
> 
> In this wired world anything and anybody can get published, some online
> journals will publish anything if you pay them, or hell you could post it
> right here for free; but getting published is one thing getting read is
> something else. Space may not be a scarce resource but time certainly is,
> nobody can read everything so good scientist look to high ranked journals
> like Nature and Science to find the best stuff. It's true that you're
> relying on the judgement of the editors but history have proven their
> judgement is pretty damn good. And if you disagree with the editors
> decision just publish it someplace else, just don't expect Science or
> Nature to endorse it.
> 
>   >  papers should only be rejected for obvious scientific
> 
> 
> I agree, I can think of only 2 reasons for rejecting a paper, it's not
> important or it's not true.
> 

Lack of importance should not be a reason. What is unimportant to one
person, may be important to another. That is what abstracts were
invented for. The thing about editorial rejection is that it is based
on an editor deciding that the paper is not worth looking into.

Another good reason for rejecting the paper is that it has been done
before. Although, having said that, it could be worthwhile publishing
confirmations of experimental results by independent teams - I was
thinking more in terms of theoretical papers.

Another good reason is being out of scope. If I was the editor of the
(fictitious) Journal of Bees, then I would be quite right in rejecting a paper
about North Atlantic Salmon as being out of scope. Of course, Nature
and Science do have rather generous boundaries of scope, but even they
would be justified for rejecting a paper about creationist theory, for
example.

Physical Review has a stated policy that they will not consider papers
in the area of foundations of quantum mechanics. That's fine - its
quite clear, up front policy, about the scope of the journal. Other
journals exist to cover those areas.

> > Other papers, where there are doubts or confusion, should be subject to
> > the author adequately addressing the referees' criticisms.
> >
> 
> And that's how Nature dodged a bullet during the cold fusion fiasco. It's
> largely forgotten today but back in1989 soon after their notorious cold
> fusion press conference Pons and Fleischmann did submit a paper to Nature,
> and given that at the time Pons and Fleischmann were respected scientists
> and knowing the potential importance of it the editors put it on a fast
> track for publication; and In just a few days they received comments from
> the referees. They wanted more data confirming the cold fusion reaction,
> but even more important, they wanted clarification of the experimental
> setup. As described in the paper the experiment was so vague and nebulous
> it would be impossible for anyone to reproduce it. Pons and Fleischmann
> responded that they were busy and just did not have time to supply the
> requested data. They then withdrew the paper and got it published in a
> third rate journal few had heard of.
> 

This is an example of peer review working correctly. It is not an
example of the editorial rejection policy I was referring to.

> 
> 
> > > Furthermore, with Google, or Google Scholar, and arXiv, you don't need
> > the status of Nature or Science to make your article visible or cited.
> 
> 
> If you're satisfied with arXiv and don't want a endorsement from Nature or
> Science then what are you complaining about?
> 
>   John K Clark

Firstly, I'm not complaining about Nature and Science. I don't care
about them, and the status they supposedly confer. I'm complaining
about the editorial rejection policy (as opposed rejecting on the
basis of peer review), that seems to have crept into use in other
journals too.

Why am I not satisfied with arXiv? Mainly, because when peer review
works, it works well. The end result are papers that are improved over
the original draft published to arXiv, or are withdrawn from
publication because some fatal flaw has been discovered (or it was
thought of before, etc). I have always diligently acted as a peer
reviewer myself, when asked to, unless it was a paper completely out
of my area of expertise. A lot of academics don't do this, or do only
a lacklustre effort, because there is no credit for doing so, which is
a major part of the problem.

However, I have had recent experiences of sending papers to journal
after journal, and having them rejected with

Re: The world is in the brain

[meekerdb]

On 4/10/2013 3:26 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:08:31 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:

Hi Telmo,

Yes, those are good counter examples.

But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." is a 
sleight
of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution 
created
those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? �

Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are 
mediated by
special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any 
different
from a nerve that carries information about gentle pressure? �You may be 
able to
point to different neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question 
to why
different neuroreceptors should result in different characters of 
experience.


You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to 
evolutionary
advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly and 
exclaim to
warn others.� People that don't suffer reproductive disadvantage.


That's begging the question. People would withdraw their hand with the exact same 
rapidity regardless of the aesthetic quality of the signal.


No, that's answering the question.  Whatever aesthetic quality causes one to quickly 
withdraw and warn other is the answer to "What aesthetic quality is pain?"



Terren and I understand this, and we understand that your view does not 
understand this.


You use "understand" as a synonym for "assert".  Your "understanding" has no predictive 
power and is not consilient with other science.


In a deterministic universe, there is no need to motivate stones to roll down hill. You 
can't remove all causal efficacy from will on one hand and then rely on it to justify 
aesthetics on the other.


I'm not the one relying on will - you are.

It doesn't work, and even if it did, it doesn't answer Terren's question: "how did it do 
that? By what mechanism?". Does evolution simply conjure "pain" from a magical box of 
infinite experiences, or are there some rules in place as to their nature?


I gave the rules - that's why it's an answer.

Brent



Craig


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything 
List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com 
Version: 2013.0.3272 / Virus Database: 3162/6236 - Release Date: 04/10/13



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:08:31 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:
>  
> Hi Telmo,
>
>  Yes, those are good counter examples. 
>
>  But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." is 
> a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If 
> evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? 
> �
>
>  Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are 
> mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those 
> nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle 
> pressure? �You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but 
> then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result 
> in different characters of experience.
>
>
> You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to 
> evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it 
> quickly and exclaim to warn others.� People that don't suffer 
> reproductive disadvantage.
>

That's begging the question. People would withdraw their hand with the 
exact same rapidity regardless of the aesthetic quality of the signal. 
Terren and I understand this, and we understand that your view does not 
understand this. In a deterministic universe, there is no need to motivate 
stones to roll down hill. You can't remove all causal efficacy from will on 
one hand and then rely on it to justify aesthetics on the other. It doesn't 
work, and even if it did, it doesn't answer Terren's question: "how did it 
do that? By what mechanism?". Does evolution simply conjure "pain" from a 
magical box of infinite experiences, or are there some rules in place as to 
their nature? 

Craig
 

>
> Brent
>  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[John Mikes]

Evgeniy, I did not read the paper either, but fundmentally agree with your
evaluation - not in toto, of course. I even take it further: THE WORLD is
in the MIND (not brain, see my reflection to Bruno below) and it is
individually different for EACH OF US, as our "mini-solipsism" - the way
we, in our personal differences adjust those informative additions we
absorb about the totality (and no two persons "get" the same of those, nor
adjust them in the same fashion). We have similar connotations and are
happy with those. Or: we argue about them.




Then Craig wrote (second refl.):

 "...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. "

JM: I may agree to the 3D as illusion by the mini-solipsism. The other
alternative is pure reductionism: Brain we have, brain explains them all. I
would not succumb to being pressured how I identify "mind". (Maybe: the
Terra Incognita explaining 'the rest of it').

And Bruno concluded:

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 would reverse the 'locations' of those nonlocal concepts:
(I do not take 'brain' as the tissue in physiology, rather the sum of
observable(?) functions of our hypothetical organ wherever it may be
'located': skull, intestines, heart, etc.) and is the applied observable
TOOL for the elusive MIND(!!!).
Cognitive and theor. computer sci. ARE part of the mind(function?) whatever
that may be. I appreciate Bruno's agnostic stance on those 'theories' that
may explain them all,, but do not yet(?) exist.
IMO theoretical computer science and cognitive science have one thing in
common: at the point where they enter 'real complexity' they exceed the
capabilities of the human thinking power (logic etc.).
We are part of - and living in - a world (=infinite complexity) we know
nothing about but our ignorance pretends to explain it all from the
fraction we so far learned (rather: explained right or wrong) for
ourselves.

John Mikes




On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 3:19 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. 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 fr

Re: Brain imaging spots our abstract choices before we do

[Craig Weinberg]

""What we need now is 20 years of serious neuroscience, not more 
speculation about the handful of studies that have been done so far," he 
says."

Too bad that we have no freedom to decide whether to pursue serious 
neuroscience instead of more speculation...it's all up to "neurons, and 
there are ions that flow through membranes". As impotent spectators to the 
magic of calcium and potassium, we can only sit back and enjoy the view 
from beneath their puppet strings.

Unfortunately they have learned nothing from Libet's mistakes. I can't 
understand how intelligent scientists could continue to conflate free will 
with the awareness of free will and the reporting of the awareness of free 
will - clearly three different sub-personal capabilities when fragmented in 
a contrived laboratory experiment. How could anyone who is serious about 
consciousness think that repeating a conditioned, meaningless reaction to 
some stimulus would yield good insight into the motivations and capacities 
of the human psyche? 

Craig


On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:05:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 4/10/2013 1:57 PM, Yon wrote:
>  
>  New replications of Libet's experiment...
>
>  
>
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23367-brain-imaging-spots-our-abstract-choices-before-we-do.html
>
>  
>
> Yon
>  
>
> It's disappointing to me that they don't take advantage of these 
> volunteers to repeat the Grey Walter experiment.  ISTM that it offers a lot 
> more precision and avoids questions of timing in reporting.
>
> Anyway it's another indication that consciousness may be overrated.
>
> Brent
>  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[meekerdb]

On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:

Hi Telmo,

Yes, those are good counter examples.

But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." is a sleight of 
hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution created those 
primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism?


Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are mediated by special 
nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any different from a nerve 
that carries information about gentle pressure?  You may be able to point to different 
neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors 
should result in different characters of experience.


You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to evolutionary 
advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly and exclaim to warn 
others.  People that don't suffer reproductive disadvantage.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Brain imaging spots our abstract choices before we do

[meekerdb]

On 4/10/2013 1:57 PM, Yon wrote:


New replications of Libet's experiment...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23367-brain-imaging-spots-our-abstract-choices-before-we-do.html

Yon



It's disappointing to me that they don't take advantage of these volunteers to repeat the 
Grey Walter experiment.  ISTM that it offers a lot more precision and avoids questions of 
timing in reporting.


Anyway it's another indication that consciousness may be overrated.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[meekerdb]

On 4/10/2013 1:55 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.04.2013 22:52 Telmo Menezes said the following:

...


I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that
pain and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the
survivability of species in an environment that is largely also
generated by evolution. It's a strange loop.



What difference do you see when one changes evolution in your sentence by god?


Do you see no difference?  Are the operation of both equally mysterious to you?

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[meekerdb]

On 4/10/2013 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:
This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that the source of 
the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way identified with decreases in 
entropy, and pain is in some way identified with increases in entropy. It is a way to 
map the subjective experience of pain and pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a 
nervous system.


You will just further muddle the meaning of entropy.


Damage to the body (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in 
terms of a sudden increase in entropy of the body. 


Consider dribbling some liquid nitrogen on your skin.  Hurts doesn't it.  But the entropy 
of your body is (locally) reduced.  The pain comes from neurons sending signals to your 
brain.  They use a tiny amount of free energy to do this which increases the entropy of 
your body also.  Your brain receives a few bits of information about the pain which 
represent an infinitesimal decrease in entropy if your brain was in a state uncertainty 
about whether your body hurt.


Perhaps this is also true in the mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. 
embarrassment) can also be characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental 
models, but this is pure speculation. 


It hardly even rises to speculation unless you have some idea of how to 
quantify and test it.

The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It would be weird if it were true, but so 
far it is the only way I know of to map pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all.


Damasio proposes that pleasure and pain map into levels of various hormones as well as 
neural activity.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[Telmo Menezes]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Terren Suydam  wrote:
> Hi Telmo,
>
> Yes, those are good counter examples.
>
> But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." is a
> sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If
> evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism?

Completely agree. I mean pain and pleasure as things that you can
observe with an fMRI machine. As for the 1p experience of pain and
pleasure... wish I knew. I don't think evolution created these
primitives in this latter sense.

> Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are
> mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those
> nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle
> pressure?  You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but
> then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result
> in different characters of experience.

Yes, I've always been puzzled by that.

> One way out of this to posit that phenomenological primitives are never
> "created" but are identified somehow with a particular characterization of
> an objective state of affairs,

I suspect the same.

> the challenge being to characterize the
> mapping between the objective and the phenomenological. That is my aim with
> my flawed idea above.

Cool. Sorry for not getting what you were saying at first. You still
have to deal with my counter-examples though, I'd say... (forgetting
the evolutionary rant)

Telmo.

> Terren
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Terren Suydam 
>> wrote:
>> > This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that
>> > the
>> > source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way
>> > identified
>> > with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified with
>> > increases
>> > in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of pain and
>> > pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system.  Damage to the
>> > body
>> > (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in terms
>> > of a
>> > sudden increase in entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also true in the
>> > mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also
>> > be
>> > characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but this
>> > is
>> > pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It
>> > would be
>> > weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way I know of to map
>> > pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all.
>>
>> Hi Terren,
>>
>> Interesting idea, but I can think of a number of counter examples:
>> cold/freezing, boredom, the rush of taking risks, masochism (for some
>> people), the general preference for freedom as opposed to being under
>> control, booze, 
>>
>> I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that pain
>> and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the
>> survivability of species in an environment that is largely also
>> generated by evolution. It's a strange loop.
>>
>> > Terren
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi 
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:
>> >>>
>> >>> On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> ...
>> >>
>>  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.
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:
>> >>
>> >> http://www.icr.org/article/270/
>> >>
>> >> “and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is
>> >> contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which t

Re: The world is in the brain

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 4:36:47 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
> This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that 
> the source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way 
> identified with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified 
> with increases in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of 
> pain and pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system.  Damage to 
> the body (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in 
> terms of a sudden increase in entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also 
> true in the mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) 
> can also be characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, 
> but this is pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with 
> pleasure. It would be weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way 
> I know of to map pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all.
>

There's no sensation of pain in associated with increasing entropy in the 
brain itself though. Also analgesia and anesthesia would be impossible if 
pain were automatically associated with entropy.

Craig
  

>
> Terren
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi 
> > wrote:
>
>> On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:
>>
>>> On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>>
>>
>> ...
>>
>>  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.
>>>
>>>  
>> You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:
>>
>> http://www.icr.org/article/**270/ 
>>
>> “and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is 
>> contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that matter 
>> and energy naturally tend toward greater randomness rather than greater 
>> order and complexity.”
>>
>> Do you like it?
>>
>> 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 .
>> 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.

Re: The world is in the brain

[Telmo Menezes]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:
> On 10.04.2013 22:52 Telmo Menezes said the following:
>
>
> ...
>
>> I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that
>> pain and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the
>> survivability of species in an environment that is largely also
>> generated by evolution. It's a strange loop.
>>
>
> What difference do you see when one changes evolution in your sentence by
> god?

A loss in explanatory power.

>
>
> 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.
>
>

-- 
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

[Terren Suydam]

Hi Telmo,

Yes, those are good counter examples.

But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." is a
sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If
evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism?

Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are
mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those
nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle
pressure?  You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but
then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result
in different characters of experience.

One way out of this to posit that phenomenological primitives are never
"created" but are identified somehow with a particular characterization of
an objective state of affairs, the challenge being to characterize the
mapping between the objective and the phenomenological. That is my aim with
my flawed idea above.

Terren


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Terren Suydam 
> wrote:
> > This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that
> the
> > source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way
> identified
> > with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified with
> increases
> > in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of pain and
> > pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system.  Damage to the
> body
> > (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in terms
> of a
> > sudden increase in entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also true in the
> > mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also be
> > characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but this
> is
> > pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It
> would be
> > weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way I know of to map
> > pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all.
>
> Hi Terren,
>
> Interesting idea, but I can think of a number of counter examples:
> cold/freezing, boredom, the rush of taking risks, masochism (for some
> people), the general preference for freedom as opposed to being under
> control, booze, 
>
> I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that pain
> and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the
> survivability of species in an environment that is largely also
> generated by evolution. It's a strange loop.
>
> > Terren
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:
> >>>
> >>> On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> ...
> >>
>  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.
> >>>
> >>
> >> You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:
> >>
> >> http://www.icr.org/article/270/
> >>
> >> “and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is
> >> contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that
> matter and
> >> energy naturally tend toward greater randomness rather than greater
> order
> >> and complexity.”
> >>
> >> Do you like it?
> >>
> >> 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: The world is in the brain

[meekerdb]

On 4/10/2013 1:38 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.04.2013 22:34 meekerdb said the following:

On 4/10/2013 1:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:

On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


...


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.



You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:

http://www.icr.org/article/270/

“and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms
is contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us
that matter and energy naturally tend toward greater randomness
rather than greater order and complexity.”

Do you like it?


You're referring me to an article on biological evolution by a guy
with a Masters of Art on a Creationist website??

Do YOU like it?


You will find a similar sentence also on an evolutionary website. 


That wasn't the question.  The question was do you like it, do you believe it, can you 
support it with your own arguments?



Such a statement will be the same. Look for example at

Annila, A. & S.N. Salthe (2010) Physical foundations of evolutionary theory. Journal of 
Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics 35: 301-321, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jnetdy.2010.019


Which is behind a paywall ($224), and says nothing like that in the abstract.

To say that mutations improving organisms is contrary to the 2nd law is wrong in so many 
ways I hardly know where to start.  First, the 2nd law is an approximate law that 
expresses a statistical regularity.  It doesn't forbid improbable events, even ones that 
decrease entropy.  Second, there is no teleological measure of "improving" in evolution; 
there is only greater or lesser reproduction.  And greater reproduction means more living 
tissue which increases entropy of the whole Sun/Earth/biota system faster - and so is 
consistent with the 2nd law.  The 2nd laws says nothing about randomness vs order or 
complexity (ever hear of Benard convection?).


Brent



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: The world is in the brain

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 10.04.2013 22:52 Telmo Menezes said the following:

...


I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that
pain and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the
survivability of species in an environment that is largely also
generated by evolution. It's a strange loop.



What difference do you see when one changes evolution in your sentence 
by god?


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.

A Mathematical Mystery Tour

[Roger Clough]

This is absolutely fascinating and you don't have to 
understand mathematics to enjoiy it.
A Mathematical Mystery Tour - BBC Horizon Documentary 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lJlsXYs8Sg


Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/10/2013 
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: The world is in the brain

[Telmo Menezes]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Terren Suydam  wrote:
> This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that the
> source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way identified
> with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified with increases
> in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of pain and
> pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system.  Damage to the body
> (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in terms of a
> sudden increase in entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also true in the
> mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also be
> characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but this is
> pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It would be
> weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way I know of to map
> pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all.

Hi Terren,

Interesting idea, but I can think of a number of counter examples:
cold/freezing, boredom, the rush of taking risks, masochism (for some
people), the general preference for freedom as opposed to being under
control, booze, 

I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that pain
and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the
survivability of species in an environment that is largely also
generated by evolution. It's a strange loop.

> Terren
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:
>>
>> On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:
>>>
>>> On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>>
>> ...
>>
 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.
>>>
>>
>> You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:
>>
>> http://www.icr.org/article/270/
>>
>> “and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is
>> contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that matter and
>> energy naturally tend toward greater randomness rather than greater order
>> and complexity.”
>>
>> Do you like it?
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 10.04.2013 22:36 Terren Suydam said the following:

This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time...
that the source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in
some way identified with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some
way identified with increases in entropy. It is a way to map the
subjective experience of pain and pleasure to a 3p description of,
say, a nervous system.  Damage to the body (associated with pain) can
usually (always?) be characterized in terms of a sudden increase in
entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also true in the mental domain,
so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also be
characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but
this is pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with
pleasure. It would be weird if it were true, but so far it is the
only way I know of to map pleasure and pain onto anything objective
at all.



This was my point. The entropy in your statement has nothing to do with 
the thermodynamic entropy and the Second Law.


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: The world is in the brain

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 10.04.2013 22:34 meekerdb said the following:

On 4/10/2013 1:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:

On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


...


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.



You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:

http://www.icr.org/article/270/

“and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms
is contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us
that matter and energy naturally tend toward greater randomness
rather than greater order and complexity.”

Do you like it?


You're referring me to an article on biological evolution by a guy
with a Masters of Art on a Creationist website??

Do YOU like it?


You will find a similar sentence also on an evolutionary website. Such a 
statement will be the same. Look for example at


Annila, A. & S.N. Salthe (2010) Physical foundations of evolutionary 
theory. Journal of Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics  35: 301-321, 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jnetdy.2010.019


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: The world is in the brain

[Terren Suydam]

This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that the
source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way
identified with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified
with increases in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of
pain and pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system.  Damage to
the body (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in
terms of a sudden increase in entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also
true in the mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment)
can also be characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models,
but this is pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with
pleasure. It would be weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way
I know of to map pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all.

Terren


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:

> On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:
>
>> On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>
> ...
>
>  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.
>>
>>
> You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:
>
> http://www.icr.org/article/**270/ 
>
> “and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is
> contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that matter
> and energy naturally tend toward greater randomness rather than greater
> order and complexity.”
>
> Do you like it?
>
> 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+unsubscribe@**googlegroups.com
> .
> To post to this group, send email to 
> everything-list@googlegroups.**com
> .
> Visit this group at 
> http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-list?hl=en
> .
> For more options, visit 
> https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_out
> .
>
>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[meekerdb]

On 4/10/2013 1:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:

On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


...


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.



You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:

http://www.icr.org/article/270/

“and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is contrary to the 
Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that matter and energy naturally tend 
toward greater randomness rather than greater order and complexity.”


Do you like it?


You're referring me to an article on biological evolution by a guy with a Masters of Art 
on a Creationist website??


Do YOU like it?

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The world is in the brain

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following:

On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


...


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.



You'd better look at what biologist say. For example:

http://www.icr.org/article/270/

“and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is 
contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that matter 
and energy naturally tend toward greater randomness rather than greater 
order and complexity.”


Do you like it?

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: Scientific journals

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 1:46:09 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
> This to me is revealing of the overall decline of science as tool of 
>> Enlightenment into it's corrupt, indulgence-selling era.
>>
>
> Yes, what's killing the Enlightenment is the lack of papers about 
> astrology and numerology, so Nature and Science need to start publishing 
> some. 
>

There is nothing in numerology or astrology which is even remotely as flaky 
as modern cosmology. Our current understanding of nature is a way to make a 
lot of incompatible equations make sense by dismantling the reality of what 
those equations were supposed to describe.

 
>
>> > The same thing can be seen with universities, as the prestige brand 
>> institutions are elevated beyond the reach of anyone but the most 
>> overprepared students
>>
>
> Yes, Harvard Yale and Princeton need to start picking stupider students, 
> that will get the Enlightenment going again!
>

Being overprepared is not about being intelligent, it is about being well 
financed and well chaperoned. Just ask Yale alum, George W. Bush.

Craig

 

>
>   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: Scientific journals

[Richard Ruquist]

Their admissions standards have already tanked


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 1:46 PM, John Clark  wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> This to me is revealing of the overall decline of science as tool of
>> Enlightenment into it's corrupt, indulgence-selling era.
>>
>
> Yes, what's killing the Enlightenment is the lack of papers about
> astrology and numerology, so Nature and Science need to start publishing
> some.
>
>
>> > The same thing can be seen with universities, as the prestige brand
>> institutions are elevated beyond the reach of anyone but the most
>> overprepared students
>>
>
> Yes, Harvard Yale and Princeton need to start picking stupider students,
> that will get the Enlightenment going again!
>
>   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.

Re: Scientific journals

[John Clark]

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

This to me is revealing of the overall decline of science as tool of
> Enlightenment into it's corrupt, indulgence-selling era.
>

Yes, what's killing the Enlightenment is the lack of papers about astrology
and numerology, so Nature and Science need to start publishing some.


> > The same thing can be seen with universities, as the prestige brand
> institutions are elevated beyond the reach of anyone but the most
> overprepared students
>

Yes, Harvard Yale and Princeton need to start picking stupider students,
that will get the Enlightenment going again!

  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: Scientific journals

[John Clark]

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

> The policy I'm referring to (editorial rejection based on perceived
> interest or status) seems likely to be a reaction to the very "junk
> science" problem you mention.
>

I don't know what that means.

> What I am saying is in this wired world, where journal space is not a
> scarce resource, papers should only be rejected for obvious scientific
> reasons


In this wired world anything and anybody can get published, some online
journals will publish anything if you pay them, or hell you could post it
right here for free; but getting published is one thing getting read is
something else. Space may not be a scarce resource but time certainly is,
nobody can read everything so good scientist look to high ranked journals
like Nature and Science to find the best stuff. It's true that you're
relying on the judgement of the editors but history have proven their
judgement is pretty damn good. And if you disagree with the editors
decision just publish it someplace else, just don't expect Science or
Nature to endorse it.

  >  papers should only be rejected for obvious scientific


I agree, I can think of only 2 reasons for rejecting a paper, it's not
important or it's not true.

> Other papers, where there are doubts or confusion, should be subject to
> the author adequately addressing the referees' criticisms.
>

And that's how Nature dodged a bullet during the cold fusion fiasco. It's
largely forgotten today but back in1989 soon after their notorious cold
fusion press conference Pons and Fleischmann did submit a paper to Nature,
and given that at the time Pons and Fleischmann were respected scientists
and knowing the potential importance of it the editors put it on a fast
track for publication; and In just a few days they received comments from
the referees. They wanted more data confirming the cold fusion reaction,
but even more important, they wanted clarification of the experimental
setup. As described in the paper the experiment was so vague and nebulous
it would be impossible for anyone to reproduce it. Pons and Fleischmann
responded that they were busy and just did not have time to supply the
requested data. They then withdrew the paper and got it published in a
third rate journal few had heard of.

The results were predictable, others tried to reproduce the experiment but
got no interesting results, Pons and Fleischmann said oh we forgot to
mention for it to work you must  do this and that. And so others would try
again with this new refinement and again they got nothing of interest and
again Pons and Fleischmann said oh we forgot to mention for it to work you
must also do that and this. After a few dozen iterations of this reputable
scientists, mindful that they were mortal and only had a finite number of
years to do science, grew tired of this silly game and moved on to other
more productive things. And now Pons and Fleischmann are no longer
respected scientists, but Nature is still a respected journal.


> > Furthermore, with Google, or Google Scholar, and arXiv, you don't need
> the status of Nature or Science to make your article visible or cited.


If you're satisfied with arXiv and don't want a endorsement from Nature or
Science then what are you complaining about?

  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: Losing Control

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:03:51 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> 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. 
>
> Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from 
> conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow 
> the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love.


If that were so, then neuroscientists would not need to ask me to move my 
arm, they would simply predict when I think I am moving my arm.
 

> "Your 
> intentions" are the result of the activity in your brain. "Your 
> intentions" do not cause any magical top-down effects. 
>

The only magic is the idea that activity in my brain knows about anything 
other than activity in my brain. The fact that both of us are now 
manipulating our own brain chemistry, striated muscle tissue, fingertips, 
and keyboard from the top-down is indisputably obvious. Your brain doesn't 
dictate what you will say or do - it is your personal experience which 
shapes your brain activity at least as much as your experience is shaped by 
it.
 

>
> >> 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. 
>
> But there is no evidence of a breach in the normal chain of causality 
> in the brain or anywhere else. Don't you think it should be obvious 
> somewhere after centuries of biological research? 
>

I can't help it that you are incapable of understanding my argument. I have 
addressed your straw man many times already. 

All chains of causality are normalized in retrospect. Whatever changes are 
associated with voluntary action are the only changes necessary. It's very 
simple, but I can't make you see it. If you arbitrarily draw a line at 
physics, then biology is impossible. If you rule out technology, then human 
flight is impossible. These rules and partitions are fictional.
 

>
> >> 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. 
>
> The current scientific position is indeed that reality is not 
> deterministic but probabilistic, with true random events. The many 
> worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics restores determinism, but 
> from the first person perspective reality is still probabilistic. 
> Nevertheless, events at a biological scale appear as "classical". 
>

I think that the current scientific position is likely a kind of delusional 
convulsion. a post traumatic nostalgic compensation for the revelations of 
the 20th century. There is no such thing as probability in physics, only an 
appearance of such from a partially informed perspective. There is nothing 
any more classical about biology than there is anything else, as 
photosynthesis already shows quantum effects.

http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/09/quantum-coherence-in-photosynthesis/

Hey, look what else has quantum effects in biology:

http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/10/quantum-effects-in-ion-channels/

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.

Re: Free-Will discussion

[Craig Weinberg]

On Saturday, April 6, 2013 6:49:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> 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.
>

By the same understanding that we know the brain is more likely to be the 
seat of consciousness than the liver,  we also know that whatever we 
experience personally is most available impersonally as brain activity. We 
can manipulate brain activity magnetically and experience a change in our 
consciousness, when the same is not true of any other organ. This does not 
mean that our experience is caused by the brain or that brain 
characteristics can be translated into conscious qualities, but the 
correlation shows us that what an fMRI reveals is the correlation of events 
between space-time body and sensory-motor self. Far from being a map, most 
of the private experience is utterly opposite and unrecognizable to any of 
the forms or functions on the 'other side.'

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.

Re: Losing Control

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> 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.

Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from
conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow
the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love. "Your
intentions" are the result of the activity in your brain. "Your
intentions" do not cause any magical top-down effects.

>> 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.

But there is no evidence of a breach in the normal chain of causality
in the brain or anywhere else. Don't you think it should be obvious
somewhere after centuries of biological research?

>> 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.

The current scientific position is indeed that reality is not
deterministic but probabilistic, with true random events. The many
worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics restores determinism, but
from the first person perspective reality is still probabilistic.
Nevertheless, events at a biological scale appear as "classical".


-- 
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.

Re: The world is in the brain

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 9:15:09 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 09 Apr 2013, at 20:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> 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. 
>
>
>  
>
?
>


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCwrbqHfTM
The Future of Computing -- Reuniting Bits and Atoms Neil Gershenfeld 
talking about using digital fabrication to replace digital computation.

>
>
> Each bit would be an atomic configuration, and programs would be atomic 
> assemblies. 
>
>
> Two apples is not the number two.
>

With logic automata, the number two would not be necessarymatter would 
embody its own programs.
 

>
>
>
> 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. 
>
>
> That is what we ask you to justify, or to assume explicitly, not to take 
> for granted.
>

The fact that logic automata unites form and function as a single process 
should show that there is no implicit aesthetic preference. A program is a 
functional shape whose relation with other functional shapes is defined 
entirely by position. There is no room for, nor plausible emergence of any 
kind of aesthetic differences between functions we would assume are 
associated with sight or sound, thought or feeling. Logic automata proves 
that none of these differences are meaningful in a functionalist universe.

Craig
 

>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> 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. 
>> > 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. 
>> > 
>> > 
>>
>> 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-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.
>  
>  
>
>
> 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

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 12:18 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> Where do you get the idea that subjective events cannot repeat? It
>> seems another thing that you've just made up, with no rational
>> justification.
>
>
> Subjective events cannot  literally repeat for the same reason that
> historical events cannot literally repeat and you cannot step into the same
> river twice. All conditions are constantly changing so that it is impossible
> for every condition to be reproduced in a given frame of experience because
> what frames private experience is the relation with every other experience
> in the history of the universe, and to an eternity ahead.

My current experience is due to the current configuration of my brain,
and the current configuration of my brain is due to the preceding
configurations. The current configuration is due to the preceding
configurations because of the deterministic causal chain which you
discount. But even without this causal chain, if the current
configuration repeats due to chance at some future point, the
experience would repeat. The causal chain is significant only insofar
as it reliably brings about the correct configuration for experiences.
A car mechanic is only significant insofar as he reliably fixes a
problem with the car, but if the same operation were performed
accidentally by a chimpanzee playing with the engine, the car would
run just as well.

>> Before we move to styrofoam balls, it's problematic that you don't
>> even accept  the modest assumption that the same matter in the same
>> configuration will yield the same behaviour and same subjective
>> states, such as they may be.
>
>
> There is no "same". There is "seems the same" by some standard of sensory
> interpretation. Configurations of matter don't yield any subjective states,
> any more than configurations of TV sets yield TV programs. The TV sets are
> built so that the programs can be watched. They have no meaning or use
> otherwise.

But the same configuration of electronics fed the same signal would
produce the same TV program. If the configuration is different and/or
the signal is different the program would be different.

>> Disrupting
>> the form of this matter disrupts the experiences, while swapping the
>> matter for different matter in the same form does not.
>
>
> If you swap the matter in a TV set for cheese, it won't work, even if the
> cheese is in the same configuration. Maybe the TV set is constructed only of
> certain materials for good reasons, or maybe you can make a TV set out of
> cheese, but it receives different (more cheesy?) programs.

If you swap the matter in a TV set for different matter of the same
type the TV will work the same. You can do this blindly, knowing
nothing about TV's and it will just work. If you know something about
TV's you can swap out components for components of different type but
equivalent function and it will work the same.

>> But it does seem, at the very least, that building a person out of
>> matter builds the experiences.
>
>
> Says who? Has someone assembled a living person from scratch yet? Have we
> even cloned an adult into another adult without growing it first from a
> zygote?

We know that the person is the same regardless of the origin of the
matter in their body. We know that the entire person is rebuilt from
alternative matter over the course of normal metabolism and they
remain the same person. We know that replacing components in a person
with artificial analogues, proteins and other small molecules, leaves
the person unchanged, and we know that molecules that arise naturally
are exactly the same in every respect we have been able to determine
as their artificial analogues. We have created bacteria with
artificial DNA which function normally. We have not yet created an
entire organism from scratch but if we did and it didn't work that
would be a staggering scientific puzzle implying that something
magical is going on, and you would expect that there would be some
evidence of this in the other experiements we have done.

>> Use the same matter but disrupt the
>> form - no experiences; use different matter and keep the form -
>> experiences.
>
>
> What different matter are you talking about? Can you use DNA made out of
> laundry soap?

If laundry soap contains all the elements needed to make DNA you
should be able to make DNA from it. Artificial DNA is made from
various chemicals ultimately derived, I guess, from petroleum and
minerals mined from the ground and ammonia synthesised from
atmospheric nitrogen.

>> The organisms now alive purport to create organisms in the future, but
>> they might all be wiped out. The universe doesn't care and has no
>> purpose or function.
>
>
> Then by that definition, we cannot be part of the universe since we are
> nothing but cares, purposes, and functions.

We are part of the universe but we are not identical to the universe.
The whole does not necessarily have all the properties of the parts
and the part

Re: The world is in the brain

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Apr 2013, at 21:19, 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.


Which is close to nonsense. Of course it is also very fuzzy. If you  
look in the brain, you see neuron, you don't see mind. Leibniz already  
knew this, and the pre-christian mechanist too.




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)


This is unclear. You might give a reference. Dennett seems to take  
physicalism for granted.


The problem of many is that they just seem unaware that the mind-body  
problem is quite severe in the weak materialist framework.






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


Not too much problem with this, but Schroedinger's book is also at the  
origin of molecular biology, and is full of interesting insight. His  
philosophy of mind is inspired by Hinduism, and in my opinion, it is  
less wrong than material reductionism.


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: The world is in the brain

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 1:16:48 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
> 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. 
>

Models have no presence. The same model can be expressed in any sense 
modality, so that our ability to conceptualize models is not the same 
phenomenon as our ability to perceive and participate in the world. 
Modeling is based on equivalence, and equivalence is part of pattern 
recognition, so that in order to even conceive of a model, there first 
would have to be direct perception and participation in a real world. 
Caring about the world gives you a reason to care about modeling it. If 
your world is invisible, intangible, and unconscious, then no models are 
needed and all participation is better served by automatic algorithms.
 

>
> > 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. 


That human consciousness is influenced by the brain is empirically well 
established. There is enough data from things like hydrocephalus, the 
recent psilocybin study, and NDEs to cast some doubt even on human-brain 
dependence in theory. Those exotic possibilities are not necessary however 
to see that there are a great variety of brainless species who nonetheless 
participate in the world in ways which seem more conscious than 
non-biological structures.

Think of it this way. If our brain produced phenomenal awareness, then the 
tissues of the brain would have to be responsible for that - the phenomenal 
consciousness of the brain would be dependent on the proto-phenomenal 
consicousness of neuronal sub-brains...otherwise consciousness appears out 
of nothing, for no particular reason, to live nowhere.

Craig
 

> 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, D

Re: The world is in the brain

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Apr 2013, at 20:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:




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.


Two apples is not the number two.



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.


That is what we ask you to justify, or to assume explicitly, not to  
take for granted.


Bruno




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.
> 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.
>
>

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: Why do particles decay randomly?

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 12:04:14 AM UTC-4, ColinHales 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 
>
 As long as the "collapse" has a spatial result, I see no reason why the 
other dimensions would have a spatial aesthetic. Our own creativity and 
choice manifests in public space as a private sensory-motor participation. 
This ordinary awareness is, I suggest, is the origin of all implicate 
orders, zero point fields, compactified dimensions, and probably dark 
matter/dark energy as well. Rather than a collapse from intangible 
quantitative dimensions, the microcosm carries the same 
orthogonal-symmetric aesthetic oscillation as we do - from proprietary 
significance to generic entropy. It is not a collapse from abstract 
dimensions of *more* axes, but a de-saturation to a reduced sensory 
protocol, where only the impersonal, unintentional qualities are preserved; 
i.e. dispositions must be indirectly inferred from positional relations 
over time. With private intention, dispositions are generated directly and 
influence positional relations over time.

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. 
>

If you had to represent your will as a set of isolated positions, it would 
look fuzzy too.

Thanks,
Craig 

 
>
> Quantum mechanics is a statistical description that is predictive in 3D. 
> It explains nothing.
>
>  
>
> I offer explanation, not description.
>
>  
>
> J
>
>  
>
>  
>  
> *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com  [mailto:
> everyth...@googlegroups.com ] *On Behalf Of *Craig Weinberg
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 10 April 2013 1:19 PM
> *To:* everyth...@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.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://