It's true because it's proven — Christoffer

So saying "it's true" just means "I think someone else has proven it"? There's no requirement for understanding? Even if they have no idea whatsoever what any of those symbols means, you think it's meaningful to say "I think that's true"?

I think it's at least debatable if it's meaningful to say something is true, if you don't understand the meaning of that "something" you're saying is true.

Right, but if I said "Garbledy bombley goo" and then later said "That statement is true"...

what would that mean to think it's true? You know what I mean?

Thinking something is true is more than just saying "I think that it has a truth value (T, F) of "T"". If I say that about "Garbledy bombley goo", then someone really has no idea what I mean when I say it's true.

If you said "I think this weight is twice as much as that weight... and I think that's TRUE", then I understand what you mean. I understand what it means for one weight to be twice as much as another weight. Even if there's elements of abstract-ness to it, I can translate it into real meaningful things.

"Garbledy bombley goo", however... I can't. I'm not sure what someone means when they say it's true.

E = mc2 also. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you think it's true.

What do you mean when you say you think it's "true"?

great answer

But we do know they can be implemented in a physical world-modelling machine, because we've built physical world-modelling machines that have doubts.

It however does not explain what is the source of doubts. — MoK

no, it shows instead that doubts are a part of an LLM, and we know that LLMs are implemented physically, on physical machinery, undergoing physical processes. It doesn't "explain the source of doubts" because that's not the point of the article, it just gives a very strong example of physically implemented concept of doubts.

They are real because I have had doubts in many situations in my life. It could be a feature of maps rather than territories but then we have to deal with the question I raised. — MoK

Neural nets - as in, things like Chat GPT - have doubts. They have ways of representing internal confidence levels about their models about the data they're ingesting.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yzGDwpRBx6TEcdeA5/a-chess-gpt-linear-emergent-world-representation

Neural nets are implemented physically, on physical hardware.

I don't see where this assumption that doubts can't exist in a mind that's implemented physically comes from. As far as I can tell, the evidence available suggests that that's incorrect, that physical implementations of world-modeling machines can and do have doubts.

So we have to either exclude the existence of options, which I highly doubt to be possible, or we have to find a proper answer to this question. — MoK

What makes you so sure "options" are ontologically real things, and not just a feature of maps rather than a feature of territories?

And if options ARE ontologically real things, why couldn't they be physical? Maybe a wave function is the physical manifestation of an option.

you're not comfortable in the language which is why you trip up so much in basic communication about logic. There's nothing to say to you. You don't understand the words you say. I might as well argue with a pigeon.

mate what the fuck are you talking about?

To my understanding, that was not a claim from someone who knew anything about logic. — Corvus

What does this mean? Have you lost your mind? You are so far out of touch with the English language that we literally cannot have a rational conversation.

you claimed my argument is made up of a bunch of paradoxes — Corvus

I don't think I said that. Here's the quote of mine I managed to find: "It's easy to make a paradox out of false statements. Corvus is a human and he's not a human. If I allow myself false statements, then voila, I can produce a paradox at will."

I didn't say it's made of a bunch of paradoxes, I said you produced an apparent paradox, trivially, by just making false statements and claiming they're true by definition.

And you were insisting everyone else was crazy except you. No! Corvus must be right! It must be logical to deny the antecedent! Yeah, I'll take the crowds of philosophers over just standing on my lonesome committing logical atrocities.

Your track record with basic logical errors has everything to do with that. I recall, perhaps you've forgotten.

I think I said enough on the tautology and contradiction. — Corvus

Mr denying the antecedent, I think I agree.

nah, you don't have the best track record with basic logic and I don't think you're doing a great job of it here. Prove there's the contradiction you said there is

If you read the posts carefully, it is clear why it is a contradiction and why it is a tautology — Corvus

I don't think anything yous aid is clear at this point.

You say "How could we have a single thought, knowing that all that exists is matter and forces?" As if you know of some other way to have a single thought.

I have no idea what you're talking about

how could we have a single thought period?

That sounds like a strawman. You are suddenly talking about Venus, when the point of the replies was about the morning star and evening star. — Corvus

How is it a strawman? You literally said "The morning star and evening star both refer to Venus."

Territory is the shit that exists. Map is a representation of the shit that exists.

There are maps, and there are territories. Our brain is a territory in itself, but it's a territory which contains maps of other territories. Those maps can be wrong. Being wrong is a feature of the map, not the territory. Uncertainty is a feature of the map, not the territory.

They aren't all simultaneously true. "The reason that the Morning star is morning star is because it is only visible in the mornings. But the reason that the evening star is the evening star is because it is only visible in the evenings." This clearly isn't true if both of those words refer to Venus, and Venus is visible in both mornings and evenings. You've only created a paradox by compiling a bunch of false statements.

It's easy to make a paradox out of false statements. Corvus is a human and he's not a human. If I allow myself false statements, then voila, I can produce a paradox at will.

The important question is how could we possibly be uncertain if matter is a deterministic thing. In other words, how the sense of uncertainty is created in the brain considering that the brain is made of matter. This is something that I am currently thinking about and I believe no one has a clear answer to it. — MoK

I don't understand why there's a problem to think about at all. Our brain doesn't have direct access to all the knowledge of the world. Our brains build models of how we think the world is, based on limited information, and sometimes those models aren't actually close to how the world is.

The way you phrased it, "isn't it a tautalogy but also a contradiction", makes it sound like you think it's a contradiction. Do you not?

I don't. I don't see what's contradictory about it.

I have a name, and I also go by a nickname. If someone said "FJ is the same person as Flannel Jesus", there's no contradiction in that. Why would the evening / morning star be different? I don't see the contradiction.

It's also not necessarily a tautology, not to a person that doesn't know it's the same object they're calling both of those things.

what makes it a contradiction?

The answer depends on whether or not the Universe is comprehensively and rigidly deterministic . Current scientific understanding says it is not. — Janus

I think an interesting question is, where does quantum randomness come from? There are a few interesting options, but one option in particular I personally really struggle with.

With many worlds, the randomness is actually only apparent randomness, an inevitable subjective experience but not random at all from a meta perspective.

Pilot Wave theory says there's no randomness, the conditions are there which determine any quantum result (maybe retrocausally).

Random-collapse says neither of the above are the right way to conceptualise the randomness, but in this way there are still two possibilities:

1. Non-local causal reason for why this random result was observed instead of that other random possibility. Imagine a universal random number generator that can affect quantum particles non locally.

2. Genuinely no reason at all. Literally no reason whatsoever why one random thing was observed instead of another. True ontological randomness.

I can't really wrap my head around 2. A lot of people go for #2 but, to me, literally any other possibility seems more comprehensible.

Obviously the universe just does what it does, with no concern for what I find comprehensible, so I could easily be wrong. If #2 is reality then I just don't comprehend reality. But damn, I really don't think it's #2. I'm with Einstein: things don't happen for no reason.

what does it mean to hand him to me?

in either case, counterfactuals work for a causal view of the world.

See, you can view the world as 2 things: the way the world operates, and the facts (or state) on which it does those operations. So you can reasonably say, if the state were counterfactually like X instead of what it was, then Y would have been the causal result. As long as "the way the world operates" is treated as a constant, then you can treat the state as a variable.

just imagine a universe that started last Thursday.

One could also imagine a godlike figure reaching in and changing a couple individual things

Do you think your view needs justification? If so, would you share it? — frank

Probably, but I think it's pretty intuitive. Most people have some kind of model of causality. Counterfactual statements like mine are just the basic idea of applying the same kind of causality but changing some of the preceding conditions.

You can apply - and verify - those kind of counterfactual statements to physics simulations. "This happened this time, but if counterfactually I changed the simulation to have this bit instead, this would have happened." You could make that statement about a physics simultaion, and then you can test it. And sometimes, those statements will be right! And sometimes wrong.

Of course we don't have the straight-forward ability to test our counterfactual statements about this world, but it doesn't seem remarkably controversial to me. In fact it's part of every-day speech for most people. "That wouldn't have happened if such-and-such".

my thoughts are, they could have made a different choice if they counterfactually had wanted to.

is that what your first reply did? It didn't look like it was looking at ANY possible answers

Well, I'm pretty sure if someone asks you a question, they just want to know how YOU look at it, not all the other ways it could be looked at lol.

Lol. I just love the idea of you giving such a useless response every time someone asks you a question.

Did you enjoy that movie last night?

That can be answered with yes or no, depending on how you look at it.

Can I take you out on a date Frank?

That can be answered with yes or no, depending on how you look at it.

Would you like a bit of sloppy toppy Frank?

That can be answered with yes or no, depending on how you look at it.

Are you in pain Frank?

That can be answered with yes or no, depending on how you look at it.

that's how questions work, that's right

Nothing i said would even remotely suggest memory isnt a function of the physical bain. I would hazard a guess that you didnt read much of what i wrote, because even a little bit of effort toward understanding it would lead you to see that my idea would fully predict memory loss, and other cognitive loss, from brain damage.

Again, current evidence would suggest you’re wrong. — Darkneos

Again, what current evidence is that?

I don't think so. I think the mind is more *what the brain does*, the processes it engages in, than just "the physical arrangment that is the brain". Of course, the physical arrangement of the brain gives rise to what it does - what it does can be derived from its physical construction.

Maybe the difference there is pedantic, I don't know. I actually can think of one important difference, though - if you can construct another, physically different object that undergoes isomorphic processes, then in my view, it's the same thing. If you can imagine a machine that was constructed to behave exactly like a brain, following the exact same high-level neuronal processes, but being chemically very different, then if the mind is "the processes the brain does", this machine is as much a mind as the brain, since it's performing the same high-level processes.

A machine that, for example, computes a neural net. (I'm not saying neural nets as they are now are conscious, I'm instead saying that if it were possible to make a neural net that follows all of the same processes as our own brains, they could be).

What current evidence says that's wrong?

I haven't read the rest of this thread, but I like Jo Whelers answer.

I would consider myself a "process philosophy" believer when it comes to the emergence of human minds.

I consider myself a physicalist, which is to say everything is either physical, or the consequence of physical events. When you mix that with Process Philosophy, you get a view of the mind where it makes sense to say "the mind isn't physical, but the mind IS the result of physical events - the mind is the consequence of physical processes".

So the physical stuff is real, the events are real, the processes are real, and that is a way of discussing how things like minds can emerge from non-mind things like chemicals in the brain.