believe there's a direct positive correlation between math and obesity! Causation? Why not?
— TheMadFool

Well, I may have eaten too much math, but I weigh only 83kg!
now — Prishon

Amazing isn't it that if you see a corpulent person, you can't tell whether fae's a sloth or a glutton? :chin: 2 of the 7 deadly sins.

I believe there's a direct positive correlation between math and obesity! Causation? Why not?

Ugh! Not likely! Where did that come from? — Possibility

Just a feeling...

— Prishon

It's a kind of least resistance principle, including both space and time — Prishon

Heard of it, yes. Understand it, no.

I suppose efficiency is, as I said, key to the universe and by that I mean getting the most out of the effort put in. The ratio output:input must be maximized. Keep an open mind as to how I defined efficiency, it's to be understood in the broadest sense possible. Since efficiency, and because efficiency is, at its heart, mathematical, the universe is mathematical. God was being lazy.

Thats interesting! You mean efficiency in space, so also in time? — Prishon

Seems to be the obvious conclusion. :chin:

Don't go Jordan Peterson on me!

True. Thinking doesn't "imply" a brain; however, based on all evidence to date, it presupposes one (re: embodied cognition). A brain, I might add, can be either neurological or, in principle, synthetic. — 180 Proof

Dialysis :point: Artificial Kidneys. How long till we have Artificial brains? :chin:

Is Fermat's principle referring to time also (I havent read the link yet). How should Nature "know" about that space efficiency? — Prishon

I'm curious, for every given phenomenon say the elliptical orbits of the planets or the life of a human or other animal, are these phenomena occuring in the least possible times?

How does it impact, say, immortality which would be, in this metric, a total waste of time. After all, the objective is to live as briefly as possible but in the most spectacular way imaginable.

This one is especially for TheMadFool. So we won't argue... — Prishon

:lol:

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. — Bertrand Russell

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. — Albert Einstein

if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. — Abraham Maslow

But then...

It appears that there's something about efficiency that's mathematical. Nature tends to be efficient and if that then it, perforce, has to be mathematical. The seed spirals on the effloresence of a sunflower are arranged in the Fibonacci sequence and that happens to be the most efficient way to use the space available; the hexagonal cells in a beehive too is such. Optimization is key if life is to have any chance of success and for that knowing math or following its rules is paramount.

That's life but what about the inanimate world. Does it also have to be mathematical? Rivers, given the terrain, tend to trace the shortest route to the sea/ocean/lake. There's something about the rule, "make the most of what you've got" that nature seems to live by.

Food for thought: We're absolutely certain that nature makes the best use of space (sunflowers & beehives) but does it do the same with time (Fermat's Principle). Frankly, I dunno!

Population thinking:

According to Ernst Mayr, population thinking is a metaphysical theory. Mayr's essentialism, amounts to the view that types, including conceptual categories, are real while individual variation is illusionary. In contrast, population thinking entails the opposite view: Types are not real in nature, only individuals exist. According to Sober, the explanatory goal for essentialists is to find an underlying order that unites and underlies the variation one sees in nature. Population thinking as a methodological doctrine states that regularities that occur in populations such as extinction, speciation, and adaptation emerge from the collective activities of individuals.
— Andre Ariew (Oxford Handbook of Biology)

If we expand population thinking to events, then regularities that occur in events such as the sun rising emerge from collectively perceived potential/significance of individual events. Patterns are not real in nature, only individual events exist. It is language concepts, then, that reify patterns such as ‘the sun rising’. — Possibility

@tim wood

I maybe completely off the mark here but doesn't all that amount to saying patterns are basically hallucinations - our minds quite literally seeing what isn't there? Are there no patterns at all? :point: paraedolia?

But I’m taking issue with the idea that everything comes down to or can be understood in terms of patterns. — Wayfarer

I don’t know if philosophy can be said to have an essence — Wayfarer

Essence = Pattern

Definition of essence:  the properties or attributes by means of which something can be placed in its proper class or identified as being what it is.

Definition of pattern: a repeated (decorative design).

Ring any bells?

You do realize there is no such thing as sunrise, yes? The sun does not rise. The earth turns, and it's all a more-complicated-than-generally-understood dance reduced poetically to a single term, sunrise. And that idea can repeat all you want. — tim wood

Red herring, my favorite!

And how could it? The sun is different and in a different place, as is everything else. Nor even is the rising the same, it always in a different place and time. Everything different, nothing the same. Where is the repetition if not in your head as an abstract idea? — tim wood

You're missing the woods for the trees. It depends on how broad/narrow the definition of sunrise is. If you want the sun to come up at exactly the same spot every day, obviously there's no repetition but if you define sunrise as the sun popping up anywhere on the horizon, there's a pattern, a repetition.

If you cannot get that these are abstract idea — tim wood

Definitions of abstract:

1. existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.

"abstract concepts such as love or beauty"


2. extract or remove (something).

"applications to abstract more water from streams"

We need to extract the pattern!

Does your life have a routine, a pattern, to it or no?
— TheMadFool
Do I have a mind that imposes all kinds of regularities and even some irregularities? You bet! Are they i the world? No. Exercise: next time you see a tree you're accustomed to thinking of as green, take a good look at it especially if there's a wind and see just how many colors you can discern, even that aren't green. And then ask yourself where your notion of green came from, exactly.

if you say "no", your life would have to be completely random. In short, are you, as one poster remarked, predictable?
— TheMadFool
Different things here. Even if my life were predictable - whatever that means - do you imagine you or anyone else could predict it? — tim wood

So, there are no patterns. Nothing repeats. Then what is this: Born -> Infant -> Child -> Teen -> Adult -> Senior citizen -> Death

?

Nothing repeats? The sunrise, the tides, the seasons,..
— TheMadFool
If you cannot get that these are abstract idea.... Ok, let's assume the sunrise repeats, that is, repetition is something the sun does, and you merely notice it, and not that you impose it in any way. So what exactly does the sun do on this morning that it also did the morning before. Ans.: nothing. If you think it did, try listing a few, and save us both the trouble by testing them yourself. I think that with even just a little critical thinking you will soon enough cure yourself of the non-critical parish-pump idea that such things are "out there." — tim wood

The sun rose yesterday just as it has for thousands of years before yesterday and it rose today too. Pattern: sunrise (repetition of an astronomical phenomenon).

It's getting late, but still worth a try. When you say repetition, I do not know what you mean in terms of the world that is. Nothing repeats. If repetition means anything, it is that you assign certain values to certain phenomena, that in sum you recollect as repetition. But nothing, in itself, repeated. Not even the sun coming up. That's the reality. What we do and think for convenience and utility something else, and not to be confused. — tim wood

Nothing repeats? The sunrise, the tides, the seasons,..

I see the color white in all white objects. That's all there is to it.
— TheMadFool
Arghhh! That is exactly what you do not do. First of all, what is "white"? Is white a one or a many, or is everything you see as white, the same white? And do you see them all simultaneously? I think not. But you see one, and attach a memory of what you think of as white. You see something else that reminds you, and you suppose them the same, and so on. That is, what you suppose you do, and admittedly what gets a certain amount of the world's work done, is not at all what happens. Not. At. All. Break it down, think it through. — tim wood

Let's not complicate the issue. Does your life have a routine, a pattern to it, or no? Before you answer that question, remember that if you say "no", your life would have to be completely random. In short, are you, as one poster remarked, predictable?

That’s not a pattern. If you had a row of stones, 4 black, 1 white, repeating - then you’d have a pattern. ‘Whiteness’ in that sense is nearer to a Platonic universal. — Wayfarer

Repetition, either qualitative or quantitative, is a pattern.

Anyway, what's so abstract about the pattern whiteness I see in clouds, snow, and other white objects?
— TheMadFool

You see a resemblance of a sort in clouds, snow, and other white objects. Yes? What is a resemblance, exactly? Think it through. If you can conclude that the notion of resemblance is in those things, and that is what you perceive, then kindly describe how that works? — tim wood

What do you mean by "...describe how that works..." I see the color white in all white objects. That's all there is to it.

And yet you repeated none of those things, except in an abstract sense. And get a girlfriend - unless a gentlemanly decency had you omit that detail. — tim wood

:lol: Girls were never my strong suit. I'm too boorish.

Anyway, what's so abstract about the paterrn whiteness I see in clouds, snow, and other white objects?

Repeat? Repeat? Nothing in the world repeats. Repetition is a seeming. Or do you have an example of something in the world that repeats? — tim wood

I get up in the morning. Breakfast. Go to work. Lunch. Get home. Dinner. Sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat (Shampoo algorithm).

And I do not think you will find disagreement. But answer this: what is a pattern? That is, pattern as pattern is a something or a nothing. If something, then what are some of its qualities/accidents, or even its substance. But it can certainly be an idea and without substance or accidents. Which, do you say? — tim wood

Patterns are what's common to things i.e. those qualities/quantities that repeat in them. In philosophy a pattern goes by another name, essence. One may be given a set of items and if one finds a certain quality/quantity repeats, is common to all the items, we have basically discerned a pattern/essence in/to these items.

Interesting but I'm inclined to disagree. I think instead "the essence of philosophy" is pattern-less (pattern-loss) recognition within "pattern recognition", that is, meta-cognitively making explicit (i.e. less transparent to ourselves) the many 'holes fissures lacunae discontinuities gaps elisions ...' which our instinctive / habitual simplifications (i.e. generalizations) usually occlude, or course-grain out of our conceptual and theoretical discourses. "The essence" is to find the noise within the signal in the noise – never completely knowing what we think we know (Laozi, Democritus, Socrates, Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus ...) After all, it's that crack in 'everything' that lets in (some) lumen rationale, no? — 180 Proof

It's a tendency in philosophy to look for the generalization that covers all the cases and we always lose but we can't resist trying. — Hillary Putnam

How do you figure that? (Airplanes don't make bird's wings unnecessary.) Examples of 'minds' without brains (CNS) please — 180 Proof

All I mean to say is thinking doesn't imply the existence of a brain. In the case of animals this is false of course - all animals that (look like they) are thinking have brains. Just because no one has seen an alien doesn't mean aliens don't exist. Just because the only kinda coffee you've drunk is hot coffee (you live in a cold place) doesn't mean there's no such thing as cold coffee (served in hot regions).

I don't think a flat-lander will face any difficulty at all. Length, numbers, multiplication, and angle, all are 1 dimensional or 2 dimensional concepts.

I'm currently involved in ethics if posting 2 small paragraphs on a thread on ethics can be treated as involvement. To cut to the chase, ethical systems/moral theories are attempts to construct a set of beliefs that repeats (pattern) in all moral issues. So, we begin with a list of good and bad actions (thoughts/speech/actions) and what we hope to do is extract those beliefs that are common to all items in that list - these items, beliefs, then constitute a moral theory like utilitarianism or deontological ethics. So, yeah, from where I'm standing at, philosophy is about patterns.

I like the Buddhist take on ethics - it's an amalgamation of utilitarianism and deontological ethics.

Take @Tom Storm's example of the person who lies to save some Jews from a horrible fate at the hands of Nazis. As per Buddhist ethics, you are rewarded for saving those people but...also punished for the lie you told. Interesting, right?

A white lie, as the name itself suggests in my humble opinion, is both good (white) and bad (lie). Dialetheists and paraconsistent logicians should feel vindicated for claiming there are true contradictions! Amazing, don't you think?

To appreciate the contradiction, you need to consider both utilitarianism and deontological ethics, together, as one system of morality.

@Wayfarer, anything to add/delete/modify?

A sophist's notion of 'wisdom' – a syllabus of self-help nostroms.
— 180 Proof

How do you think that put-down contributes to the thread? — Athena

(1) Did you ask TheMadFool if he had perceived my reply to him as "disrespectful" and that he told you so? His reply to my reply, which I have quoted above (with a follow-up link to another reply no less), certainly suggests he didn't think I'd given offense. And nothing "negative" has followed between us from that exchange either. In any case, I'll gladly apologize to TheMadFool if he now says my reply to him (quoted above) was "disrespectful" to him. (2) So tell me, "Miss Manners", on what basis do you accuse me of this "disrespectfulness"? (3) And lastly, since mine are evident on the first several pages of this thread, where are your positive contributions to this topic? (Answering these three questions might count as you contributing something.) — 180 Proof

180 Proof & Athena. I'm alright. Thank you for your concern. Good day.

"The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian" — baker

the best philosopher is a dead philosopher — baker

The people that are left, what they've become, are not the kinda people worth saving. — Emmett (Quiet Place 2)

dopey Tegmark conjectures — Prishon

:lol: Keep saying funny things like that and I'll never argue with you.

If you're so enamored by the idea of time and predictions, my advice to you would be to go astronomical, the modern incarnation of astrology which I hear was popular back when kings and emperors needed to know the right time to begin/stop their campaigns.

Suppose there are cycles like you seem to believe there are. You'd need to pay attention to the period of these cycles. We have cicadas where I live, the annual kind and not those that swarm every 17 years. Their usual rhythm is to emerge around mid-September and announce the coming winter. However, I noticed that sometime, especially when we experience a cold spell for a few weeks, the cicadas come out in mid-August, a whole month ahead.

The explanation: The cicadas don't actually have a biological clock that keeps time. What's actually happening is they sense the temperature - when it drops, they take to the trees. What I'm getting at is, time ain't it! Temporal cycles are illusions created by the fact that natural conditions for some event to occur is itself cyclical. Reproduce these natural conditions at odd times and the rhythm vanishes. You get the idea.

The knowledge and ability were mentioned, because you said that everything is mind. Just to say that, everything is not mind. Never said that we were talking about knowledge and ability. — Corvus

:ok:

I'm a functionalist so I agree 'self-aware phenomenal cognition' (mind) is in principle substrate-independent. — 180 Proof

That means the brain isn't necessary for thought although, in our case, it is.

No, we are not saying everything is mind. We are saying that the math knowledge and ability is in mind, and we apply it to the real world objects. — Corvus

We're not talking about knowledge and ability. What we're concerned with is the reality of math. Is it discovered, in which case Platonism would be true, or is it invented, Platonism false? The rest of my argument follows from that.

There's the rub. Will we ever be able to verify whether A.I. is actually thinking/is conscious? No. Even if someone's entire brain was replaced with a functionally identical mechanical brain and they reported they were conscious, we would still wonder: are you really conscious? We would always wonder that. Science can never answer that question. That suggests science is not the tool for this particular job. — RogueAI

If you think like that then you mean to say that the information accessible to us is insufficient to conclude the presence of consciousness. So, here I am, talking to my friend and his conduct is identical in important respects to mine - he talks, acts just like me - and I, from that, make the following analogical inference:

1. I talk, act, initiate, respond in certain ways and I'm conscious.
2. My friend also does talk, act, initiate, respond in the same way as I do.
Ergo,
3. My friend is conscious.

Now, if I'm to doubt my argument from analogy above, there must be a relevant dissimilarity between my friend and me. If none can be found, the argument is cogent and I, perforce, must accept that my friend, like me, is too conscious.

Coming to AI, we seem reluctant to follow the same logic i.e. the following intriguing scenario is the case for AI:

4. I talk, act, initiate, respond in certain ways and I'm conscious.
5. An AI does act, initiate, respond in the same way as I do.
BUT...
6. I hesitate to conclude the AI is conscious.

We're trying to eat the cake and have it too. If you have doubts about the AI being conscious, this uncertainty automatically extends to your friend too and, conversely, if you believe your friend's conscious, the AI must also be conscious!

Something about the evidence for consciousness is problematic. Either we believe it can be mimicked perfectly in which case there's no difference between your friend and a p-zombie and nonphysicalism is true or it can't be and AI that pass the Turing test are truly conscious.

If math doesn't exist in some kind of Platonic realm and is all in the head as it were, we have a problem:
— TheMadFool

But the whereabout of Platonic realm is not conclusive is it? It does not preclude possibility of its locus in the human mind, does it? — Corvus

No it does not but if math is invented, Platonic realm missing, then we have a major issue because of the circularity I mentioned earlier which I will reiterate for those interested:

Supervenience-like relationship exists between the sciences which can be represented in the following way:

Math -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Mind (Brain) -> ?

Legend: The mind supervenes on biology, biology on chemistry, chemistry on physics, physics on math.

The ? = Math if math is invented. That would close the loop as it were and we have on our hands a rather vexing circularity: Everything we know, including the mind as per physicalists, is math but math, if Platonism is false, is mind (it's in our head). So, everything is mind then or everything is math. It's quite confusing.

It's googleable, and I don't see why it would deserve a different thread. — bongo fury

You're right if the issue is only about why we cry but there's something much broader that I want to explore. It's old news as far as I can tell but still I haven't come across a thread specific to the matter that I want to examine.

Yeah, "you" are an idea generated by a brain interacting with its environment. — 180 Proof

You are not your brain as in the thinker, presently the brain as far we can tell, can be anything else, even a sufficiently advanced microchip for all we know.

I was intrigued but I can't see it now on wiki. — bongo fury

Too bad. I wanna start a thread on it but let this one run it's course. If I can remember to that is. Until then :mask:

Last time I looked at the wiki page I could have sworn there was a theory about smoke getting in the eyes of early hom sap at its funeral pyres. :roll: — bongo fury

That makes so much sense and you seem to know why. Can you expand and elaborate it so that we have a coherent theory for why we cry when we're down in the dumps?