--- Niels-Jeroen Vandamme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >This is a textbook case of what Eliezer calls > >"worshipping a sacred mystery". People tend to act > >like a theoretical problem is some kind of God, > >something above them in the social order, and since > >it's beaten others before you it would be wise to > pay > >due deference to it. Of course, a theoretical > problem > >doesn't care how many times you attack it, and we > have > >proven as a species that we can understand things > that > >are much more grandiose than we are (eg, General > >Relativity). By all means ask for an explanation > and > >hard evidence if someone claims to have solved an > open > >problem, to weed out the cranks, but simply > declaring > >that it is "pretentious" to even attempt to > understand > >something is not going to get anyone anywhere. > Im sorry that sounded that way. I rather meant that > it was pretentious to > believe one understands it, rather than attempting > to.
Attempting to understand it and then criticizing anyone who says they do understand it is counterproductive. Note that a mystery is only dissolved when someone actually *does* understand it; therefore, doing perpetual investigations of a subject you know aren't going to work is an excellent way to keep the mystery intact without most people noticing you're trying to keep the mystery intract. > In fact, > consciousness is something Ive spent to much > thinking about, and though > Ive discovered many new possible aspects of > consciousness, Er, what exactly do you mean by this? > rather than > coming any closer to understanding its very essence You do sound rather mystical here. "Essence" seems to be a mix between a fancy buzzword and a storage case to pack up any inconvenient or confusing ideas in. > I only came to the > conclusion that it was probably impossible to do so. Ye, for we olde scientists have studied much of the lore of Biologie, and though we have Learn-ed much, the true Essence of Life Force shall remain forever beyond the Graspe of us mere Mortales. Praise be to the Flying Spaghettie Monstre, who among us is alone in being Priviledged as the Creator to understand these Mysteries! > Perhaps consciousness doesnt have any explanation > at all. The same may > apply to other things, after all. Motion may be an > example thereof: it seems > impossible to explain it by any mechanism, as the > interactions it would > involve would inevitably entail motion themselves. Have you studied special relativity? The concept of motion is actually quite simple- when something's four-velocity is other than <1, 0, 0, 0>, we say it is "moving" relative to us at that particular point in time. > >That said, I do not understand how this mysterious > >thing called "subjective experience" works myself, > and > >as of right now I am not even going to try, because > it > >is liable to go around in centuries-old > philosophical > >fruit loops that go nowhere. > I suppose Im somewhat digressing from the original > subject, as you were > discussing futurology rather than metaphysics, so > Ill stop my rambling > after this post: the length of my posts has > escalated from a few sentences > to a few pages. Apologies if I decide not to reply > to any further > objections. > > >What exactly do you mean by "coincidence"? You seem > to > >be tending towards the idea that "everything that > >happens happens for a reason", which is used by > many > >religious apologists to handwave away tragedy, and > I > >don't want to get stuck in that black hole due to a > >misunderstanding. > Everything has a cause, not necessarily a reason. I > guess I expressed myself > in inadequate terms. What I meant was that I believe > that, at the most > fundamental level, nothing in the universe is > stochastic. Do you have any evidence for this claim? It contradicts a great deal of established science. > >As to quantum > >randomness, asking why a nucleus happened to decay > at > >time X instead of time Y seems to me to be as > futile > >as asking why the constant in Einstein's field > >equation is > >25.13 and not .159. > I dont think were talking about the same thing. I > was talking about > Heisenberg uncertainty. Asking the question "is the particle X at location Y or Z at time T" is not only futile, but meaningless, since "location" is not well-defined at the quantum level. Particles are wave functions. Asking exactly where a wave function is down to greater than Heisenberg precision is as useless as asking where the Atlantic Ocean is down to a precision of one meter. > >Due to the lack of time > >travel, this can't loop back on itself, and if it > went > >to infinity the universe would already have decayed > >into a maximum-entropy state. Therefore, there must > be > >some event A in our universe which doesn't have a > >cause in our universe. > According to the bubble universe theory, the > universe arose from the > residuum of a larger, decayed universe - a false > vacuum. If the universe is > just one of countless bubbles, past and future > could be infinite, so that > everything would have a cause. An interesting, > though brief, article on > this: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_adequacy_principle > . I referred to events specifically in our universe for a reason. Making conjectures about events we are physically prohibited from observing is pointless. > >What do you mean by "the consciousness"? There's no > >reason why consciousness should be conserved. > > Granted. Its certainly possible that consciousness > lasts only an > infinitesimal moment. But then, it also wouldnt be > possible for > consciousness to be uploaded. Yer what? A law of conservation is a statement that a certain quantity will remain invariant under a transformation. In this case, I meant that the quantity of sentient beings does not have to stay invariant under uploading or any other physical process. For example, in a universe where conservation of consciousness applies, it might be impossible for any acceleration to change the number of conscious beings; ie. if you have a universe state A described by some mathematical device, and you transform it by calculating a new state A' which is identical except for an acceleration in any direction at any speed, the laws of physics would dictate that state A have the same number of conscious beings as state A'. Saying that there are no conservation laws is not equivalent to saying that the number of conscious entities must always change as rapidly as possible- it might change, it might not, but there's no law of physics to explicitly force it into one state or the other. > In fact, if that is > the case, everything in > the universe is pretty much senseless, as youll be > dead the next moment > anyway - ostensibly to be replaced by another > consciousness, so to speak. Consciousness must be in flux to exist, like a wave- if you were this minute frozen in LH2, you wouldn't think anything at all despite having all the same atoms arranged in the same places (disregarding LH2 leaks into the human body). However, that doesn't mean that consciousness must disappear- it just has to transform into a slightly different state. > >If you > >copy a mind into a computer, and leave the original > >intact, you don't get one mind which is somehow > >divided between them- you get two independent > minds, > >each of which has a prior memory of being you. The > >idea of "uploading into a computer" means, > presumably, > >that you want to experience the glory of VR without > >all the inconveniences of physical life. > > And experience is essentially consciousness. > > >*Two* beings would wake up from the uploading > process, > >one physical and one upload, in the exact same > manner > >that two beings would wake up if you instantly gave > >birth to identical twins. > > (I assumed that, if the universe is infinite, there > can be infinite copies > as well as two.) Even if the universe is infinite, it still isn't possible to make an infinite number of anything because of concerns with light cones. There's only so much matter in your future light cone that you can influence. > _________________________________________________________________ > A lot of passions? 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