Suppose two scientists are arguing over whether the Northern White Rhino still exists (which is at least an endangered species). The thesis in question is <The Northern White Rhino exists>. — Leontiskos

Different thesis since the whole temporal reference has been dropped.
The thesis <There is a living NWR presence on our Earth at some implied moment in time>, which leverages a specific definition of 'exists', and there plenty of alternative definitions, as you seem to point out. So I left the word out of my version of the thesis statement.

I looked at the reading group thing. Interesting, but better to participate in parallel while it's going on and not a month later.

I get the prime number claim but is that really a predicate that is outside of the human notion of prime numbers? — philosch

I use it as an example of a real predicate. It can be (and is) independently discovered (and not invented) by anything with rudimentary math skills. It, like Fibonacci numbers is found in nature. A pine cone always has rows and columns that number a pair of adjacent Fibonacci numbers. There are many species of cicadas that come out every X years, and the various species have various cycles, but the cycles are always prime numbers (and for a reason). The 17 year ones are numerous where I live now, but we have some 13 year ones as well. Cicadas rely on a real predicate of some numbers being prime that has nothing to do with human concepts. I actually don't know the purpose served by the Fibonacci thing, but it's found in so many places. It has something to do with being an integer approximation of the golden ratio (another non-human-ideal predicate).

<Numbers do not exist in the same way that tables exist>

Does that proposition have no truth value? noAxioms? — Leontiskos

The obvious answer being 'yes', so I instinctively look for some definition that allows them to exist in the same way. Both are arguably mental assessments. That's a similarity, but the former is arguably not just that, so I still fail.

When two philosophers offer two different accounts of existence, it is hard to discern who is correct (if anyone).

I care little about who is correct. I picked a position where predication does not require existence (with 'exists' not clearly defined). I am looking for a contradiction arising from that premise, a contradiction that does not beg the principle that such cannot be the case.

I can think of several definitions of 'exists' that one might use, but some possibilities:
E1 "Is a member of all that is part of objective reality"
E2 "I know about it"
E3 "Has predicates"
E4 "Is part of this universe" or "is part of this world"
E5 "state X exists to state Y iff X is part of the causal history of Y"
E6 "existential quantification", where 51 is not prime because there exists an even divisor that is neither 1 nor 51.

There are probably better wordings.
E1 is kind of an objective wording, and 17 being part of that seems to come down to Platonism. There seems to be no way to test for E1, rendering it pretty useless.
E2 is idealistic, and essentially solopsistic, but not necessarily non-realist.
E3 is a converse of EPP. Santa exists then? Unclear since it isn't clear if Santa can be fat.
E4 is closely related to E2 in that reality is what we see/infer and not what something else sees. Yet when asking if the northern white rhino exists, it seems to be an E2/4 sort of question.
E5 is relational (as opposed to objective) and applies only to states within a causal structure. So 17 doesn't exist, not being part of a causal structure. E5 has nothing to do with epistemology.
E6 is like E1, but just a different set than 'reality'.

E7: I welcome other definitions to add to the list.

It's a bit like saying, "The Riemann Hypothesis has no obvious truth value, therefore ..."

Why does the truth value need to be obvious for there to be a truth value?

It seems, that the word "prior" is not the correct word in relating the existence of something with the properties it has. Perhaps the phrase should be "existence requires predication"? — RussellA

Different answer: Anything requires predication, since a lack of properties is itself a property, and a contradictory one at that.

But what do we mean by "properties". You raise the problem as to how we can know something that is outside our experiences. — RussellA

A thing having a property is an entirely different subject than something's knowledge of a property. Whether the property is conceived of or not seems off topic.

However, you present an impossible task when you say "Good point, as long as "properties isn't confined to your experience", in that how can we discuss something that we have never experienced.

Given that abstraction is itself experience, I agree. Talking about something is experiencing it, or at least experiencing the abstraction of it the same way that we experience only the abstraction of something that actually (supposedly) exists.

Kant made the point when he said that we cannot discuss things-in-themselves, as they are the other side of anything we experience. Something outside our experiences is an unknown, and if unknown, we cannot talk about it.

Kant's concludes the ideals (the experience) is all there is, and all that is talked about. So fine, abstract something, and talk about that, but with the realization that it's not the experience that's the subject being discussed, only the means of doing so.
Going down this path is once again why the disclaimer is there in the OP. I see no productivity to it.

I have zero experience of Santa, yet I can discuss Santa and his properties. I have experience of say an image of Santa, but the image is not Santa, nor is either the image or the experience of it the subject of the discussion..Properties of Santa are not properties of either the image nor any of my experience.

We only know about properties because of our experiences. Because we have experienced the colour red, we are able to talk about the property of redness.

I can talk about colours that I've not experienced. There's plenty of colours out there that say a bee can see but we cannot. Point is, I don't see personal experience limiting what can be discussed.

A property is a description in language of something we have experienced. A property is not something that exists independently of the human mind in the mind-independent world.

We definitely differ in this opinion. I do not define a property, nor existence, in any anthropocentric way. Human (solipsistic) epistemology works that way, but not metaphysics.

I have admittedly been slow to reply to the topic as I am busy looking up pages and trying to not just give flippant replies without thought.

Things that exist I would say have real predications and fictions which are constructs of the mind have predications also, but those predicates are every bit the imaginary construct that the fictional object is. — philosch

OK, but this concerns mental abstractions, something I am trying to exclude per the disclaimer at the bottom of the OP.

Sure. abstractions themselves have predications, as potentially do the things being abstracted. But I am trying to avoid any anthropocentric definition of existence that centers itself on human epistemology and/or experience.

That said, an apple being an apple is a mental construct, as is its redness. It is actually difficult to identify a predicate of anything that is free from human abstraction. OK, 17 is prime, and while being a human discovery, it is not a human designation/predicate.

Santa is another case: Existing only as a mental construct and not in any way that is free from contradiction. Santa is not a possible thing AFAIK, so any predicate of Santa seems necessarily to be a reference to an ideal, not to a Santa. I acknowledge this unavoidability.

Thank you for your input. I have to agree with much that you post.

(à la Meinong)^ — 180 Proof

This got me down the pipe of sosein vs sein. Still not sure if I get it since the difference seems to hinge on a prior agreed state of existence or not, but nobody seems to have answered how that distinction might be made. Who am I to declare the unicorn to not exist? Pretty sure the unicorn doesn't consider me to exist either, so we're even on that score.

A typical sein statement might be "Bob is hungry", which apparently translates to "There exists an x such that x is hungry" which seems to invoke a sort of existential quantification definition of 'exists'. But that definition seems to mean "x is a member of some implied set", a relation.

That is, apart from usefulness in laying out a metaphysics, is there a truth of the matter? — J

I suspect no truth of the matter, and the best one can reach for is utility (usefulness). I am trying to explore the options since I find little utility in the typical realist position.

Joe offers a particular doctrine about existence, Mary offers a different one. Is there anything either can appeal to, in order to determine whether one is correct? — J

That I can answer with 'no'. Yes, there might be a truth (maybe), but if there is one, is there a way to determine it? I think not since multiple valid interpretations will always be avaliable. The best appeal one can make is to logical consistency and simplicity.

What does prior in "existence is prior to predication" mean? — RussellA

It seems to mean that predication requires existence. The rejection of the principle that says this is what I'm trying to explore here.
If this holds, the existence itself is not a predicate, but if it doesn't hold, then yes, it becomes just another predicate.
Your SEP quote seems to answer your question, but the temporal definition is not the one being leveraged here.

...The first is Hume and Kant's puzzlement over what existence would add to an object. — SEP - Existence

With the EPP, existence becomes redundant and adds nothing to a statement. Without EPP, existence needs to be more clearly defined to have meaning, but it seems to be inherited. Existing parents beget existing children, but nonexistent parents beget nonexistent children. The two worlds seem disjoint, but other than that, there seems to be no obvious way to tell the two worlds apart.

It cannot be the case that an apple exists and at a later time the property "is red" is added.

Got news. Apples turn red after a while and don't start that way any more than I started out as cynical.

We can only know about the existence of something in the world by observing its properties.

OK, but I'm not really concerned with knowing about something's existence since I'm not using an epistemic definition of existence. I'm explicitly avoiding it since it's a different path.

In what way does the existence of something take precedence over its properties, when that something cannot exist without properties?

Good point, so long as 'properties' isn't confined to your experience. This is a good quote for something like aether theory or Russel's teapot. It has properties, sure, but none of them are experiential.

Looking at it the other way round, in what way do the properties of something take precedence over the existence of that something, when there would be no properties if that something didn't exist?

This statement doesn't follow if EPP is not presumed, and I'm not presuming it here.

Perhaps the phrase should be "existence requires predication"?

Which gets me hunting for a counterexample of something existing, but with no properties.

Being an apple is a predication in the same way that being red is a predication. — RussellA

Agree. Not-being also seems to be a predicate, so it is true that I am not batman, but not true that Santa is not batman, at least if EPP holds

Should one say existence is prior to predication or existence is contemporaneous with its predication?

You're contrasting this with 'prior', right? It is not an assertion of temporal ordering. That just means that predication cannot apply to a nonexistent thing, not that the predication has some sort of temporal confinement to the duration of the existence. Some things don't exist in time. Is 17 prime? EPP says only if 17 exists. 'Contemporaneous' says only during times that it exists, a fairly meaningless concept.

Meinong says 17 is prime, period, regardless of its ontology. Santa is fat. Prove Meinong wrong.

It was invented by Albert Einstein. — Arcane Sandwich

Invented or discovered? Maybe a quibble, maybe not. — RogueAI

Neither invented nor discovered. It was popularized by him, but it was there before him. Poincare for instance said it before Einstein did.

The formula is a special case since energy is frame dependent.
A more general version is E = mc²/√(1-(v²-c²))

Thesis
I think that the formula is true.

Lead in
Do you agree, or disagree with it? — Arcane Sandwich

Do I agree that you actually think what you claim to think? Seems to be a shallow question.

The truth of the formula seems to be related to the working of our physics and not something objectively true, the way the question is worded.

Most people intuit why you would multiply a Time by a Speed. That makes intuitive sense. Why a mass? — flannel jesus

mv is momentum, something reasonably intuitive. KE is half mv², which is also intuitive to some, and is the same units as the mc² thingy. But those two formulas (momentum, KE) are newtonian concepts that work only at low v. c is not just another speed, but a universal constant, and mc is not the momentum of a rock moving at light speed. So we're back to exactly what you're trying to convey: What does mc² mean anyway? People (without understanding) say "ooh, that explains why such a big bang when mass is converted to energy", since c seems to be a pretty big number. But in natural units, c is 1, reducing the formula to E=m which doesn't sound very bangy at all. Energy is proportional to mass, but has different units.

I didn't read the whole thread. After a whole page+ of posts I could not figure out what the OP was trying to say that was any deeper than "hey, the sum of 3 and 5 is said to be 8, do you really believe that?".

Quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant because at macroscopic levels all the quantum weirdness (e.g. quantum indeterminacy and superposition) averages out. — Truth Seeker

Only sometimes, but not the important times. There are chaotic systems like the weather. One tiny quantum event can (will) cascade into completely different weather in a couple months, (popularly known as the butterfly effect) so the history of the world and human decisions is significantly due to these quantum fluctuations. In other words, given a non-derministic interpretation of quantum mechanics, a person's decision is anything but inevitable from a given prior state. There's a significant list of non-deterministic interpretations. Are you so sure (without evidence) that they're all wrong?

Anyway, it's still pretty irrelevant since that sort of indeterminism doesn't yield free will. Making truly random decisions is not a way to make better decisions, which is why mental processes do not leverage that tool.

The program is not able to generate any other results — Fire Ologist

Neither are you. Only one choice can be made, free will or not.

Or you didn’t explain the distinction you see well enough for my thick skull.

Choice: Having multiple options available and using a natural process to select among them.
Free Choice: Having multiple options available and using a supernatural process to select among them.

It kind of comes down to your beliefs concerning the nature of your process. I have no idea why the latter renders one responsible for the choice made and the former does not. That makes no sense at all to me. It just sounds better. "Hey, the one is called 'free', so I must have it, right? Right??". The other one sounds compelled to me, despite the opposite being the case. The former is the thing in question making its own choices and the latter involves the thing being compelled by a demon that has possessed the entity, overriding what it would have otherwise chosen. That gives the demon free choice, but it takes it away from that which it has possessed.


I generally agree with most of what flannel jesus says. He knows how to apply physics to philosophical issues.

what does it mean to hand him to me? — flannel jesus

I think he means that he is essentially parroting the teachings of Schopenhauer in his reply. I wouldn't know, I don't know the teachings of almost any of the well known philosophers. The vast majority of them do not know how to apply physics to philosophical issues, even those that were around during the 20th century when so much changed.

We make voluntary choices (e.g. my choice to post on this forum was voluntary) but we don't make choices that are free from determinants and constraints (e.g. my choice to post on this forum was both determined and constrained by my genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences). Do you understand what I have said? — Truth Seeker

I suppose. A frog (or a banana) would have made different choices, even if positing if some sort of 'I' was one of those things makes no sense at all.

Please tell me more about the 4 different kinds of determinism. Thank you.

I actually came up with six, but the first four are the important ones.

1) determinism.as not-dualism
I googled 'determinism' and got this: "all events in the universe are caused by prior events or natural laws ". This is probably the primary definition used when asserting a dichotomy between determinism vs dualistic free will, the latter being defined as choices made by supernatural causes. The word, used in this way, seems to be a synonym for naturalism.
This sort of free will is required to be held responsible by any entity not part of the natural universe (God). It is in no way required for internal responsibility (to say society).


There are a couple that come from science, two from quantum interpretations, which is deemed deterministic if it doesn't involve fundamental randomness or 'god rolling dice' as Einstein put it.
2) Bohmian mechanics:
This is a hard deterministic interpretation that says that the universe is in a defined state at a given time (few other interpretations accept that), and that subsequent states yield one inevitable result. The state of the entire universe matters including future states since retrocausality is not ruled out. It posits hidden variables to resolve conflicts.

3) MWI
Everett's postulate is that a closed system evolves according to the Schrodinger equation, which is a fully deterministic equation. Thing is, this results in all possibilities existing, so technically an agent makes every possible choice, not just one.

4) Block universe
This view says that all events share the same ontology and thus there is no sorting into ontologically distinct categories of past, present and future. If all events exist equally, there is no way the evolution of events could be otherwise, thus every state is an inevitability.

5) Classical physics
Classical physics (Newtons laws, basic mechanics) is fully deterministic since all the equations are time reversible. There is no randomness to it anywhere. This one can be discounted because it has been proved that our universe cannot be fundamentally classical.

Edit: Wrong! Classical physics has actually been shown nondeterministic, hence should not be on my list at all.
Norton's dome is a demonstration of the indeterminacy of Newtonian physics.


6) Omniscience:
If there is an omniscient entity, then what it knows is technically an inevitability or the entity wouldn't actually be omniscient. The church has a way to explain its way around their assertion of these seemingly contradictory concepts, perhaps very similar sort explanation that discounts your suggestion above that choices made via naturalistic processes constitutes them being constrained, something with which I do not agree.

how can anyone say this yet to be determined thing called “choosing” is “doing the exact same thing” as anything else? — Fire Ologist

But you're implying that it must be the case that it is fundamentally different when you say "I see calling what the program does “choosing” as personifying the program". That was what I was balking at. Empirically, if I cannot see my opponent, I cannot tell if I am playing a human or not (hence 'doing the exact same thing'), so the usage of the word 'choose' is appropriate in either case.

In order for the program to make a move, it needs to have been given its programming; there need be no agent inserted into the program so that the chess pieces move.

All true of yourself as well. Besides, most chess playing programs don't move physical pieces, and if they do, it's an add-on (a sort of assistant), not part of the process doing the choosing (wow, just like yourself again).

Maybe the same is true for people. But then there is no such thing as choosing (because there is no agency).

Ah, so 'agency' is another one of these anthropomorphic words that is forbidden to other entities. I cannot base logic on such biases.

When a program is done calculating, it has no choice but to display the answer or make the move. Choice is something else than the calculations that might precede it.

Agree. The choice seems to be the result, possibly the output of the process, especially when it is cleanly delimited such as a chess move. A machine could choose not to display its choice of move, but that would be a bad choice since it would lose, so it seems optimal in most cases to make the move quickly. I can think of exceptions to that, but they're rare. A human is more likely to make that choice than a machine. I even witnessed exactly that a couple days ago.

I still don’t see a distinction between what a choice is, and what a free choice is.

Of course. You chose your definition that way.

But if we have the ability to make a choice, we must be a free agent in some sense.

Ah, you use the word 'free' despite the word having no distinct meaning to you. Why didn't you just say "we must be an agent'? You already put that word on the human-only list above. Now you say 'free agent' like that is distinct from just 'agent'. Be a little consistent if you're going to take this stance

For example, if I had the genes of a banana tree — Truth Seeker

Nothing can be illustrated by proposing a contradiction: 'if X was not X' is a contradiction. Unless of course you think there is a second thing that could 'be' either a person or possibly a tree or a shadow or whatever. Just trying to make syntactic sense of a comment like that. The wording implies a sort of bias of the existence of something that you are 'being', the same sort of implication of the lyrics "I wish that I could be Richard Corey" (Simon & Garfunkel), the latter of whom is a reasonably close neighbor of mine.

If aliens kidnapped me when I was a baby and placed on the surface of Venus, I would have died from the heat.

Better example. Not sure what it illustrates, but at least it's not a contradiction. The point being made is still illusive. Your choices are a product of those variables, yes. It is also a product of your reasoning, which is the variable that makes you responsible for them and doesn't make the shadow responsible for depriving a plant of sunlight.


Concerning your poll and why I didn't vote:

Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made? — Truth Seeker

Unclear question. Are you asking if determinism is the case, and therefore the choice made (I don't believe there is a 'the past' as distinct from 'not the past') is an inevitability of some initial state of the universe? Or are you perhaps asking if the agent that makes a different choice is still considered to be the same agent as yourself? Or asking something entirely different?


About definitions: I have proposed a small list of definitions of 'free choice' as distinct from choice that isn't free. I've also claimed at least 4 different kinds of determinism, but have not listed them in this topic. You've not clarified which ones are what you're talking about or not.

If I had the genes of a banana tree instead of my genes — Truth Seeker

I answered that query as best I could. It makes no sense to ask (if X happened to be not-X, what would happen?). So of course a tree doesn't make the same decisions as a person, but I don't see how that's relevant to the topic.

I am trying to work out if anyone deserves any credit or blame for their choices.

Of course they do. Free choice is not needed at all for that. Common misconception. It is only needed for external responsibility (like responsible to some entity not part of the causal physics), but it is not needed to be held responsible by say my society, which IS part of the universe.

If the choices we make are the products of variables we didn't choose e.g. genes, environments, nutrients and experiences, then how can we be credited or blamed for anything?

Because it's not those variables that made the choice, it is how you process them into the chosen selection that matters.

The OP raises whether or not it's possible to 'change the past' of the actual world (i.e. retroactively making a choice different from the choice that already has been made) — 180 Proof

I didn't read it that way. No explicit mention of retrocausality, only the proposal that it might have possibly evolved differently from some given prior state. That answer is, as I said, a matter of interpretation. BTW, any non-local interpretation allows some retrocausality, but does not allow information to go back. So some occurrence might be a function of some event that has not yet happened (interpretation of delayed choice experiments), but a message cannot be sent to the past by such a mechanism, and to 'change the past' would seem to require the latter ability.

imo counterpart choices in 'parallel / possible worlds' are not relevant to the question at hand.

It is a different evolution of some same initial state. I find that relevant, but since that person in the other world is arguably not 'you', then 'you' didn't do the other thing. You can't both have chosen both vanilla and chocolate (twist is a third choice, not 'doing otherwise').

I have a science background, so I approach philosophy with that in consideration at all times.

What determines who chooses what? If the choices are determined by genes, environments, nutrients and experiences, are the choices free? — Truth Seeker

Are we free agents or are our choices determined by variables such as genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences? — Truth Seeker

Depends on one's definition of 'free'. A compatibilist would say yes even if physics is fully deterministic, but a compatibilist might have a completely different definition of 'free' than somebody wanting to rationalize a different view.
A better definition is 'not compelled by something not you'. Nothing in a deterministic universe compels a different decision than the one you want. Hence compatibilism.

OK, your second quote there implies that 'free' means at least "not determined by that list of variables", in which case probably not, but why in the world would you want that kind of 'free'? Sounds like a formula for horrible choice making.

If I had the genes of a banana tree instead of my genes, could I have typed these words? I don't think so.

Your genes influence your general makup (what you grew up to be), but are for the most part not consulted in any way for making a particular decision.
If you were conceived with banana genes, then you'd have grown up into a banana plant. But if your human genes were all suddenly switched into banana genes shortly before ordering ice cream, you'd probably pick the same flavor, and only later get sick and die because you are failing as a banana plant. Not a biologist, so I don't know how fast it would happen, but it would very much happen.

If I had the genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences that you have, would I not have typed your post and vice versa? — Truth Seeker

To me, that sounds like 'if nothing was different, then would anything different happen?'. What exactly is different when you say those words? You seem to have left nothing out. What is being swapped here?

What I am exploring here is whether our choices are inevitable or not. — Truth Seeker

This has to do with which interpretation of physics (if any of the known ones) happens to be the case. In some, yes, all inevitable.There are several definitions of 'determined' and several of them need to be not the case for the sort of 'free' that you seem to have in mind. Most non-deterministic interpretations are alternatively fundamentally random, which doesn't allow any more freedom than a non-random interpretation. Rolling dice is a very poor way to make decisions that matter, which is why there are no structures in human physiology that leverage natural randomness. And there very much would be such structures if there was useful information to be found in it. Evolution would not ignore any advantage like that.

I think a better way to think of it is that the real world is run by randomness constrained by deterministic processes. — T Clark

No idea what that means.

I never think we can clarify a human behavior at issue, like choosing, by analogizing this behavior with some other type of entity’s behavior (like a chess program). — Fire Ologist

I on the other hand avoid the anthropocentric view and broaden my list of examples in order to better understand. I find the chess program to be fundamentally no different than a human in this respect.

I don’t see any substantial distinction between a choice and a free choice.

I noticed, which is why you couldn't tell apart those two very different definitions of choice. I do see a substantial distinction, and so the word 'free' becomes meaningful, and not just redundant.

In your example of what the computer is doing before it makes a move, why call that a “choice” at all?

Because it met your definition of it. I explained how when I brought up the example.

It is operating on inputs to determine the only move it must make.

No, there are many moves that it can make, and it is not compelled to choose any particular one. It evaluates each in turn and selects what it feels is a better one, all the same steps that a person does.The action (the evaluation and the selection) influences the outcome, just as your definition requires. If the choice were compelled, the program would not have influence over the outcome and would thus be unnecessary and the move would make itself, and those chess programs would be ever so much faster, and then it would not meet your definition.

It is not choosing, but calculating.

False dichotomy. Calculating (pondering, whatever) is part of the process leading to the eventual choice. It is not this or that, but rather this that leads to that.

You said yourself its next move is determined just as it is for the other 19 identical programs.

Computers tend to work best with deterministic components, even in the face of a possible non-deterministic physics. There is no 'select randomly' instruction such as is utilized by the cat in my example above. Human physiology is similar in this respect. There seems to be no components that amplify randomness or otherwise produce output that is not a function of prior state.

There is no agent
...
I see calling what the program does “choosing” as personifying the program.

Ooh, anthropomorphism again. Apparently many words only apply to humans and not anything else when doing the exact same thing. The racists used the same tactic to imply that people not 'them' were inferior.
A chess program makes its own moves, so it very much is the agent in those selections.

A really good chess player is effectively calculating just as well, and his or her moves may not be choices either.

Are we changing the definition again? Does a bad chess player make some sort of actual choice when the good one has no agency or something? Your definition wording doesn't seem to support that.

Can you clarify the difference between a choice and a free choice

Well choice is as you define it: The thing in question needs to influence the outcome (be part of, (be the primary) cause of it, given the relevant variables in the input state.

Free choice (as typically defined) means that the primary cause of the outcome did not follow from physical prior state. There is way more than one definition of free choice, but that's a common one, and it is quite distinct from your definition.
The OP doesn't mention the word 'free' at all, but does mention "could have done otherwise" which is an informal alternate definition of it.

Present comes from our live perception happening now — Corvus

Actually it is impossible to perceive the present. You speak of the fairly immediate past, which is what is typically in our active perception at any given time.

You can only make choices for now.

Choosing is a process, and thus cannot happen in an instant, so choosing is spread out over some interval of time regardless of whether you assign unequal ontology to those moments or not.

Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made? — Truth Seeker

Unless the universe (of determinant forces and constraints on one) changes too, I don't think so. — 180 Proof

Under any nondeterminist interpretation, one 'could have chosen differently', or even might not have faced the choice at all. It also works under some fully deterministic interpretations like MWI where all possible choices are made in some world.
The key seems to come down to the word 'anyone'. Is that person in some other world that chooses otherwise the same person as you? The answer to that is yes if you're the same person you were last week (different state of course), and no if there is no persistent identity, in which case it is hard to argue that anything makes a choice at all.

Yes, I agree with you on this. If we're right, it seems to me the whole question of free will vs. determinism becomes trivial, pointless. — T Clark

1) Determinism has little to do with free will since the typical definition of free will doesn't become free if randomness is the case instead of determinism. Determinism also has at least 4 different definitions, so that is also unclear.
FW seems to be central to the dualist argument because they way choices to be made by a supernatural agent despite the fact that neither deterministic nor random physics supports that.

Would you like a bit of sloppy toppy Frank? — flannel jesus

Not sure what sloppy toppy is, but it sounds like a bonus they put on your hot chocolate.

OK, I looked it up. Way off.

A choice, by definition, has to involve multiple variables and a deliberative agent whose action influences the outcome among those variables. — Fire Ologist

That's a different definition, and one with which I agree. From that definition, this doesn't follow:

If I “cannot make a different choice” then there is no choice. — Fire Ologist

For example, a chess program has countless variables to ponder (at some length), and has (is) a deliberate agent whose action influences the outcome. If there was no chess program, the action would not be taken, so the influence is clearly there.

But...

given 20 identical programs with the exact same initial state, each will typically do the exact same thing.
They have choice, but not free choice since they can consider, but not actually make a different move. Your assertion presumes not choice, but free choice, which has a different definition (the one the OP uses).

Now take Schrodinger's cat (and a presumption of say Copenhagen interpretation). Given 20 identical cats in boxes with the exact same initial state, about half will die and half not. The cat thus has free choice (could have done otherwise), but sadly has no actual choice (no deliberate agency in the outcome). See the difference? One can have neither, both, or one but not the other.

You seem to be attempting to combine the two into one, with no distinction between the cases, in which case choice and free choice do not mean different things.


The OP (where's he gone?) seems to be leveraging the 'could have done otherwise' definition, not the definition you give, a 'deliberate selection from multiple options'.

Maybe the last word of this post has been predicable for ten thousand years.

I assure you otherwise. Too many people equate 'deterministic' with 'predictable'. The former is interpretation dependent (metaphysics), and the latter is very much known, and is part of fundamental theory.

Past cannot be changed, so you couldn't have made different choices for the past. But you are free to make choices for now and future. — Corvus

This presumes an ontology where events are sorted into past, present, and future. Fine and dandy, but sans an empirical difference, I don't see the point.

But that's one version of determinism: All events share the same ontology, which means the Corvus in 2026 is no more capable of making a 'change' (as the word is used above) as the Corvus in 2020.

The usage of 'change' also implies that some future event is one thing, but later that same event is a different thing. That syntactically makes no sense. It isn't change if it was never something different.

Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made? — Truth Seeker

Depends on several factors. Ignoring choice of deterministic interpretation of things or otherwise, in what way would this entity that makes a different choice in the past be you, or relative to what would that choice be 'different'? What ties you (that choses vanilla) to the possible T-S that choses chocolate?

I didn't vote because the question was vaguely worded.

If we couldn’t ever have made a different choice in the past, we didn’t ever make any choice at all. — Fire Ologist

This also depends on definitions, but you seem to be using one that doesn't distinguish choice from free choice, rendering the adjective meaningless.

"I can see more of chicago than I geometrically should if you were right". They're actually right about that. — flannel jesus

I've been at the sand cliffs on the eastern short of lake Michigan. Interesting place. Houses fall down it now and then, inevitably. You can stand at the edge of it and the wind is enough to turn your eyelids inside-out, but step back 3 meters and you can set up a table and play cards.
Yes, refraction lets you see further than geometry suggests, but nowhere near as far as the flat Earth would suggest. You should see Chicago from my cliff instead of a very visible sky against water.

I personally can barely make out the curvature looking out over the Hudson river, from a vantage right at sea level, about 160 km inland. There are places you can look a long way, enough that the boat bottoms disappear behind the water, if not the horizon which is the hills in the distance. Maybe you can write that off as refraction in the other direction. Takes a good clear day to do this. This all sounds like a similar observation at the lake in the video, but without any actual instruments.

If you watch for a few minutes, you can see the curvature of the earth perfectly clearly. — Srap Tasmaner

Seemingly with the benefit of drawing straight lines onto the image. I have no such benefit when gazing at the Hudson.

So again, the flat Earthers are either being willfully ignorant, or refusing to understand the entire justification of the argument for why the Earth is round when observed from X distance away. — Philosophim

I would say 'willfully misleading'. I seriously doubt that flat earthers actually believe their own schtick. The whole point to buck the consensus. One of their advertisements urged you to join the flat-earth society. "We have members from all across the globe".

And if we're not relying on expert opinions, we might have to prove refraction too. I'm not sure how that proof would go. — flannel jesus

And that's the general question, having many of the same issues as solipsism: How can any external information be trusted? How much science could one demonstrate (not prove) if one had knowledge of the goal, but one still had to start from scratch? You probably could demonstrate Newtonian physics without too much reliance on prior expert work. The moon landing real? Not a chance, especially with all the doctored photos they published. But just because they're faking the photos doesn't mean they weren't there. The footage still looks better than the best stuff hollywood puts out today, and they didn't have AI to deep fake it back then.

I think the major problem with all this is that people aren't questioning or are critical of scientific facts because they've measured anything. Their beliefs are rooted in the laziness of never looking for actual answers and facts themselves. — Christoffer

There you go! It seems that a great deal of people with crazy personal ideas that are claimed to be their actual beliefs, seem to justify them via avoidance of actual evidence. Humans are not by nature rational, but they're probably the best species at rationalization. Answer first. Weak justification if one actually feels the need. Ignore anything contradicting.

Most flat earthers believe that the earth is also 6000 years old. — flannel jesus

Fantastic example of rationalization as opposed to rational. Most of the churches have abandoned this assertion by now, but per last-tuesdayism, it cannot be falsified by empirical evidence.

I don't think sailing around the world is easy! — flannel jesus

Don't need to. Just be in a few different places, enough to show the curvature. You do need to leave home, something not necessary for option 3.

Tourist rockets? Like the one jeff bezos went up in? Is there something affordable for a normal person? — flannel jesus

It costs about the price of a normal house. I could afford it if I had different criteria about how my earnings are best spent.

No comment on the other two? Both are pretty easy and less expensive.

1 Go up in one of those tourist rockets or even a good airplane. It gets high enough to see the curvature.

2 Learn ocean navigation. One can tell where one is on a globe given visibility to sun/starts and a good clock. Can't do any of that on a flat Earth. It was the sea people that first knew the Earth was round, and also how big it was. Interesting that Columbus, the original BS artist, had to convince those loaning him his boats, that it was smaller than what was measured. He knew his stuff, but he was looking for somebody with boats but without the smarts. Yay Portugal!

3. Not a personal test, but look at airplane schedules. Surely the guys in it for a buck are not in it to perpetuate the hoax.

I'm reminded of another answer where I learned about the theory: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/106476/what-are-the-ontological-implications-of-that-the-universe-is-not-locally-real/106478#106478

I'm not sure what anti-realism is but I find it hard to fight against it.

From the wiki page it means:

In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is the position that the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality.[1] In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed — Darkneos

First of all, the finding isn't a theory. It is a more precise set of techniques used to veryify Bell's theorem of some 55 years prior where he proved that the universe was not locally real, and thus not classical. That means it might be local, it might be real, but it cannot be both.

The wiki page concerns philosophical realism. Bell's theorem and the stackexchange link you reference are talking about scientific realism (counterfactual definiteness, or CFD). The principle of CFD says that one can meaningfully speak about the unmeasured state of a system. Things are only real when measured, so for instance, there's no such thing as a photon in flight since it hasn't been measured by anything yet. This principle stands opposed to the principle of locality, which says that the cause of a effect must lie in the past light cone of the effect. No spooky action, so to speak.
Only one of these principles can be true, and no quantum interpretation holds to both of them, and this has been the case since at least 1964.


As for trusting science, I haven't read the first paper.

Do infinitesimals exist (in the platonic sense)?

1. If they don't exist then any number system that includes them is "wrong" — Michael

An infinitesimal is not a real number, so it doesn't exist in the set of real numbers, but that's in the sense of existential quantification. I don't see what the purpose of platonic existence is. 3 and 5 seem to add up to 8 whether or not 3 and 5 exist in the platonic sense. Lack of that does not prevent the usage of the number system. You seem to say something along these lines in the OP.

2. If they do exist then any number system that excludes them is "incomplete" (not to be confused with incompleteness in the sense of Gödel).

There is an 'extended real numbers' that includes infinity. I'm sure we can name a set that includes infinitesimals as well. Still not complete since I think octonians is necessary for that, extended octonians at that.

I did not follow the bit about fictional numbers

The definition you gave in 2nd post about numbers essentially being real, well, the definition seems to identify them being objective: Independently gleaned by isolated groups. This is a good argument against any specific god since isolated groups might all claim divine communication, but none of them come up with the same story. With mathematics, this is not the case.

Still, the sum of 3 and 5 being 8, is that a property of this universe, or does it work anywhere? Is it truly an objective fact? I don't equate objectivity with being real, but the definition you gave seems to equate the two.

I am inclined to argue that maths do not 'exist' in any objective sense. — Tzeentch

Cool. An opposing viewpoint. What's the alternaitve?

How does superdeterminism differ from the Bohmiam interpretation of QM? — Relativist

SD is a local "interpretation". BM is not since it requires FTL causation.
Under BM, one can consider empirical measurements as evidence. Under SD, one cannot, which is why 'interpretation' is in scare quotes above.

Lots of experiments, particularly modified Wigner's Friend experiments done with photons, seem to suggest that one of:
Locality;
Free Choice; and
The existence of a single set of observations all can agree upon

...must go. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Keep in mind that free choice in physics is a different definition than what is typically meant in philosophy of mind. The physics definition is closer to how a compatibilist would define free choice.

But yes, per Bell's theorem, either locality or scientific realism must go. The loophole is superdeterminism where statistical measurements cannot be taken due to the lack of 'free choice' to measure anything that the conspiracy wants to be kept hidden.

Superdeterminism is hands-down the *worst* possible take on quantum mechanics. — flannel jesus

Agree with all that you posted. It isn't even listed among the interpretations of quantum mechanics. It's significance is not in it being anything plausible, but rather it being a loophole in what otherwise counts as Bells 'theorem', which implies a proof.

[/quote]everything in the universe has conspired to trick us into thinking QM is true[/quote]Very similar to the BiV argument actually. There are monsters around every corner but the universe conspires to never let you look where there is one.

It would be nice to know whether or not QM is actually deterministic — Relativist

As flannel jesus points out, determinism and superdeterminism are very different things. Not sure how knowing about determinism would help anything, except of course to falsify all the views where it isn't.

I mean, if presentism is not the case (an interpretation of time for which there is no evidence at all), then determinism is true regardless of one's choice of quantum interpretation.

The point is that this claim 'it is the person asociated with the human animal who is doing the thinking' is not question begging, whereas 'it is thet human animal that is doing the thinking' is. — Clearbury

My point was that even if it is accepted that the human animal is doing the thinking, the conclusion that animalism is true does not follow. Yes, the premise begs the animal doing the thinking (as any premise begs whatever it is positing), but it does not beg animalism.

What if 'you' includes the experiencer, the persisting fundamental addition that humans have and that bugs and robots don't. The animal part still does the thinking (explaining the expensive brain), but not the experiencing, and not the exertion of will, if that can somehow be separated from thinking, which it often is.
That's what I mean by P2 not begging animalism, but only begging that the animal does the thinking. A lot of dualists would deny that the animal part does either of the thinking and experiencing. It's not a view I particularly understand, so I cannot speak authoritatively for the opposing view.

Olson provides the logical form so you can check its validity.

1. x)(x is a human animal & x is sitting in your chair)

2. (x)((x is a human animal & x is sitting in your chair) x is thinking)

3. (x)((x is thinking & x is sitting in your chair) x = you)

4. (x)(x is a human animal & x = you) — NOS4A2

I actually don't follow the notation, but it seems illustrated by my attempt at applying something real to x.
P1. x)(x is a big toe & x is at the front of your shoe)
P2. (x)((x is a big toe & x is at the front of your shoe) x is thinking)
P3. (x)((x is thinking & x is at the front of your shoe) x = you)
C4. (x)(x is a big toe & x = you)

Clearly this seems wrong, but it is the logic being employed, is it not?
The bit about 'x is thinking' very much begs that it is the toe doing the thinking, and not 'you', which includes the toe but is not entirely consisting of the toe.


Nobody replied to my query asking if animalism is in any way distinct from physical monism. I support such a thing, but that argument totally falls flat. The toe-ism argument is typically countered by one of incredulity, that a toe has not the capability for thinking and therefore there must be something more. That's another poor argument.

To my mind it's really quite a pathetic thing to do, inventing a game just to win it. — goremand

:100:
and again illustrated by the post following

It's the person associated with the human animal who is doing the thinking. — Clearbury

Not necessarily. The two could be separate things, and it is the human animal part that is doing the thinking, as is asserted by P2 of the OP argument.
How else do you explain why evolution would put such an energy-expensive thing up top if its function is no more than what can be accomplished by 1/8th the mass and energy intake (as evidenced by a similar mass deer).

magine there is a weightless box into which a 90 kg person has been placed. — Clearbury

OK, to apply that directly to the OP:

(P1) Presently resting on the floor is a box.
(P2) The box masses 90kg
(P3) You are the contents of the box.
(C) Therefore, the box is you.

That doesn't seem to be begging anywhere, yet the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, and it doesn't follow from them if the mass is due to the box itself or the contents.
Perhaps I did not apply the scenario correctly to the argument.

if the 'is' in premise 2 is taken to be the 'is' of identity 9and the argument's validity depends on this) then it's question begging, as it takes for granted that the person who is doing the thinking and is associated with that human body is one and the same as that human bod — Clearbury

I don't get that from P2. It clearly says it is the animal doing the thinking, not the person. There's no mention of 'you' or the person in P2, except as an adjective expressing what owns the chair. There's no implication that what is thinking is what owns the chair.

The animalist would claim that those who argue "no" are wrong. That it's incoherent to consider ourselves as fundamentally something other than a human animal. — Baden

So then how is animalism vs. not-animalism any different than a stance of physical monism vs dualism?

I didn't know people denied this. — Patterner

Exactly. There are plenty of monist philosophers, and the only difference is that they don't choose this particular term to describe their identical view.

Thanks for the insight, and I think you’re right. The idea that we are animals, and not angels or something, — NOS4A2

It isn't an animal vs angel (or any other non-earth-evolved life form). It is an assertion of us being no more than what any other animal is. There's nothing additional (spirit, whatever goes to heaven say) on top of it that the animals don't have.

I didn't see it, probably missed it; will someone be kind enough to refer me to where the significant terms in this thread are given even a tentative definition? — tim wood

Not sure what terms you need, but per the quoted argument in the OP, this is what I got, and certainly did not get at first:

A human animal is our physical body, that which is an individual of a species evolved from the earliest members of the animal kingdom.

A person (or thinking being) is all of you, including especially any part that persists after death. The argument asserts that the two are the same thing, and its opponents assert otherwise. The argument seems to be more of an assertion and seems to employ zero signficant logic in coming to its conclusion, but those in opposition do little better, typically arguing from incredulity or something.


Professional philosophers are often in the capacity of supporting the beliefs they have been taught. The priests take your money in exchange for promises made regarding your fondest wish: Everlasting pain free life, which requires a fancy story behind it to explain why everybody who has paid the price seems to still obviously not become immortal. So that story has to be rationalized, and that's one of the reasons so many philosophers looks for ways to do so.

Somewhere in my teens I became mature enough to realize that the priests were snake oil salesmen. Not the lower ones who genuinely believe what they've been taught, but the upper ones who make up the stories. So while it took a while to abandon the god and the immortality story, it what a pretty quick death of my opinion of how the church leveraged it all.

The debate isn't whether human beings are animals. They are. That's just a fact. The debate concerns whether we (the persons reading this thread) are animals. — Baden

OK, I think I actually clicked with this comment. The bit about being numerically identical with a human animal makes more sense. The desired answer is No. We are fundamentally something else, and we only have temporary control (a free will thing) over this particular animal. Is that it?

In that case, my question becomes, at what point in the evolutionary history of h.sapien did this animal suddenly cede its self control to something else?

The argument in the OP still seems to make no sense. It seems to beg that the human animal in the chair is complete, not requiring a separate thing to do its thinking. There's all kinds of problems with the model of the animal not doing the thinking, but that doesn't seem to be the point here.

Souls aren’t human animals, brains aren’t human animals, consciousness isn’t a human animal, minds aren’t human animals, are they? It’s not a question whether humans are animals, but whether you are a human animal. — NOS4A2

So I've always said (sort of). Brains don't think. People do. A soul (per ancient definition) I think means something like 'all that is you', not a separate part that persists when the rest does not.

So take a frog. It has a soul by that definition. It is an animal, and it thinks, but nowhere near at our level. It has all that stuff you mention above. What distinguishes a human animal from any other animal that happens to do something better than most/all the other animals? What is being suggested in counter-argument by those that deny animalism?


And yes, I looked briefly at the SEP article to get some of the terminology being used, but I read less than a 10th of it.

Animalism seems to be the default position. It seems to be those denying it that are positing something extraordinary, in need of extraordinary evidence. I don't think either side can be falsified, so any proof one way or the other is bound to have flaws, which are often quite easy to spot.

It's an ontological distinction - a difference in kind. — Wayfarer

Case in point. This seems to be the claim in need of the evidence. I see no obvious difference in kind.

A cat is numerically identical to an animal. A bottle isn’t. — NOS4A2

That's a biological answer, not a metaphysical one. Yes, a human is part of the kingdom 'animalia' and a bottle (and a Tulip) is not. The distinction you chose seems to say no more than that.

Which premise do you disagree with? — NOS4A2

All of them, but the first two beg the conclusion that humans are animals, and that fallacy invalidates the argument.

The precursor species of early hominids would have gradually developed characteristics unique to humans such as the upright gait, opposable thumb, and enlarged cranium, but it really came into its own with the development of the hominid (neanderthal and h.sapiens) forebrain over a relatively short span of evolutionary time. It enables h.sapiens to do things and to understand levels of meaning that other species cannot. — Wayfarer

But none of that is fundamental. Plenty of species develop unique abilities, None of that makes them not animals.

Off topic, but the hasty evolution was never finished. We're sort of a train wreck of a being with lots of problems to work out. The thumbs predate humans. The upright gait is the thing that's very much a work in progress, and all my children and my wife (but not me) would have died without modern medical intervention due to defects in this area. I would have died as well, but not from gait defects. Modern medicine is interfering with natural selection.

No where in the first premise does it say you’re the human animal sitting in your chair. — NOS4A2

It calls that which is sitting in the chair a 'human animal', which is begging the fact that a human is an animal. That it is you or somebody else seems irrelevant. It isn't talking about the cat also sitting in that chair.

Animalists make the metaphysical claim that we are animals. — NOS4A2

It seems to be a biological claim. Not sure what it means for it to be a metaphysical one, or what would make us metaphysically distinct from animals were it not the case. The articles suggest a fundamental difference, perhaps in how we persist differently than animals. But I've seen dead people and they persist pretty much the same as a dead frog.

Why is the idea that we are animals seemingly unpopular among philosophers? — NOS4A2

The philosophers of old had no access to modern biology and presumed a form of anthropocentrism. At least reference the opinions of the ones who have access to and accept Darwin's findings. I do realize that there are plenty that still do not, but almost all of those beg the not-animal conclusion first and then rationalize backwards from there.

The SEP article seems to focus on our nature and persistence, and if either of those are different than animals, and if we are evolved from them, then at some point some fundamental change occurred which needs a hypothesis describing it, which nobody seems to want to produce.

Are each of us numerically identical to an animal? — NOS4A2

I don't know what that means. Give an example of something nonhuman that is numerically identical to an animal (frog?), and then something nonhuman that isn't (tree?). Humans seem more like frogs and less like trees.

If the aim of the argument is to prove that humans are animals, then it begs the question, because it starts by presuming the conclusion. — Wayfarer

I agree that the argument posted makes no sense to me and the first two premises seem to beg exactly as you describe. I don't see an argument at all outside of this.

that there is a difference in kind between h.sapiens and other species — Wayfarer

A difference, sure. A fundamental one? When did that change occur, or do you not consider humans to have animal ancestry?

I didn't define cause and effect in terms of observer. — MoK

Actually, I also did not see a particularly observer dependent wording of any of the descriptions.
Granted, all empirical investigation, only through which cause and effect are known to us, is via observation. But the description does not seem to be grounded in epistemological terms, hence my not seeing the observer involvement.
Perhaps @tim wood would care to elaborate.

Useful in an informal and non-rigorous way, but not an exact account of anything. — tim wood

With that much I agree.

How does something that exists cease to exist? — tim wood

Let's use the moving spotlight wording: Something ceases to exist when the spotlight moves away from it. Is that so hard? I'm no presentist, but I see no flaw most definition it uses. My father has ceased to exist, as has perhaps my twitter account. Are details of those necessary? All objects seem to have a finite duration, so a better question would be how some object might manage to not ever cease to exist.
In this case, it was a specific 'state of some system', which, under presentism again, ceases to exist when the state of said system changes to some different state.

I have three categories of ontology: Past (does not exist), present near future (exists), and future (future excluding near future which does not exist).
...
Let's stick to three events, A, B, and C. A causes B (B exists in the immediate future) at now. At the next moment, A ceases to exist, and B exists at now and causes C (C exists in the immediate future). Etc. — MoK

That seems to be what I said, so I guess I got pretty close in my attempt to summarize your view. I called them states, not events, since event to me is a point in spacetime, and states are not points.

So you agree that there was a chain of causes and effects between the asteroid collision and extinction of dinosaurs? — MoK

Calling it a chain carries an implication of something linear, rather than a network. There is no single cause of any effect, but the asteroid was indeed a contributor to it. Was it critical? Would the dinos be around today had that thing not hit? Probably none of the species of back then, which would have required said species to not evolve at all in 70 million years. We have alligators today, which is arguably evidence that the dinosaurs are not existence, but the 'dino' part seems to no longer apply.

Calling it a chain also carries a loose implication of a finite number of links, that is, discreet time. No evidence of this has every been demonstrated, but such a view has also never been falsified, which is why simulation hypothesis is not totally impossible.

Secondly, the term 'state' is a very 19th century classical concept. Einstein's relativity of simultaneity reduced 'state' to a frame dependent abstraction instead of a description of anything objectively physical. QM put serious doubt into the concept of counterfactuals, and the concept of an objective state depends heavily on counterfactuals. It means that there are meaningful past states, but not present ones, so if the past doesn't exist, then there are no states unless one posits counterfactual definiteness, and doing that requires one to discard locality, that cause and effect cannot lie outside each other's light cones, or in other words, faster than light causation. The latter principle is something I'm more reluctant to abandon.

Finally, my answer below is expressed in B-series terms. I would not agree to A-series wording of your question.

All the above said to cover my butt; in a naive 19th century classical way, yes, I acknowledge that there are states in between the asteroid hitting and the last dinosaur going extinct.

No, I am not talking about presentism or A-series of time — MoK

I didn't say you were talking about them, I said you were presuming them by referencing words that only have meaning in them.

since to me both now and immediate future exist whereas in presentism or A-series of time only now exist.

There are several variants of presentism, but all of them posit a preferred moment in time.
Growing block says that past and present events exist, future ones do not. Moving spotlight says they all exist, but the 'spotlight' travels across them, making one of the moments preferred. Your variant has not been discussed, but you seem to have not three but four categories of ontology: past, present near future, further future.

[/quote]No, I am talking about a change with a cause-and-effect relationship.[/quote]That's change over time.

Sure change exists.

Change is a different state at different times. That's fairly well defined.
You seem to use the pool ball analogy. The example is also a simple illustration of cause and effect.
The cue ball is rolling, and is near the edge of the table at one moment, and rolling near the middle a second later. That's change. For that change to 'exist' would seem to require both those moments to exist, which is not true of all variants of presentism.

Sure we cannot have any change if there is only one state.

I suppose it depends on your definition of 'change' and/or 'exists'.

Cause and effect can lay at the same point of time

That would violate physics unless they were the same event, and a single event cannot meaningfully have a cause/effect relationship with itself.

There is a chain of causes and effects between the asteroid hitting Earth and dinosaurs going extinct.

As there is between any cause and effect events, unless you posit discreet time and/or discreet events. Point is, it doesn't stop the asteroid from being a cause of the extinction effect. I say 'a cause' and not 'the cause' because there are very few effects that are the result of only one cause.

By immediate future, I mean the next point in time whether time is discrete or continuous is off-topic.

'The next point in time' implies adjacent time moments with nothing between. That makes zero sense without a model of discreet time, so it is anything but off topic here.

If effect does not exist when cause exists then cause ceases to exist when time passes so there cannot be any effect.

That is a non-sequitur again. You exist despite the non-existence of your birth (presuming past events are non-existent, which you seem to support).
You seem to be fighting a strawman model of one state existing, then no state existing, then the subsequent state existing out of nowhere, which is silly. No classical model posits the nonexistence of state at any given time. I say classical because it is a counterfactual assertion, but counterfactuals are relevant to quantum physics, not classical. Quantum is relevant here since you are assuming a discreet model of time, a non-classical concept.

I am not talking about A-series of time.

But you are using it. It's a way of speaking, using references that explicitly or implicitly reference something only meaningful in A-theory of time.

So you agree?

I've rendered no opinions at all. I'm trying to help you put together a coherent argument. The part I reference made no references to things not meaningful in B-theory, which is what I meant by that fragment making sense from that point of view.


What you seem to be proposing is a sort of discreet paired presentism, where there are discreet states A B C etc. State A is the present for some finite duration of time. During that time, state B ('the immediate future') comes into being while state A is still there. The difference between the two is 'existing change' as you put it. Some time after B comes into existence, A ceases to exist and B becomes the present, and then C can come into existence. So it goes on like that, with one or two adjacent discreet states existing at a given time, and if there are two, they are labeled 'present' and 'immediate future'.
Am I close with that, or am totally reading this wrong?

The logic here has countless fallacies.
You seem to be presuming presentism (only the present time exists), as evidenced by the A-series language if nothing else, and yet this is not explicitly called out.

The cause and effect cannot lay at the same point of time since otherwise they would be simultaneous and there cannot be any change. — MoK

OK, You seem to be speaking of change over time as opposed to any other kind of change which may not have a cause/effect relationship.

Change exists.

Does it? This seems to contradict the assumption of presentism which says that only the present exists, and for change to exist, two different states need to exist. Why must change exist if there exists only the one state?

Therefore, the cause and effect lay at different points of time.

Not 'therefore' since this does not follow by any of the above, but yes, by definition, cause and effect lay at different points in time.

Hence the effect must exist in the immediate future if the cause exists at now.

Nonsequitur. Cause: Asteroid hitting Earth. Effect, years later, dinosaurs are extinct, hardly the immediate future of the asteroid event.
Also, 'immidiate future' is totally undefined. It sort of implies adjacent moments in time with no moments in between, a sort of discreet model of time that 1) has not been posited, and 2) apparently contradicts premise zero, that of presentism, that only one moment in time exists.

But the effect cannot exist if the immediate future does not exist.

The effect does not exist if the future does not exist. It being immediate is irrelevant.

Therefore, the immediate future exists when there is a change.

Again, non-sequitur since you've not established that both cause and effect necessarily exist (and also the lack of definition of 'immediate future').


Now if we discard the presentism premise, then we can attempt to follow the same argument without the A-series wording.

The cause and effect cannot lay at the same point of time since otherwise they would be simultaneous and there cannot be any change. Change exists. Therefore, the cause and effect lay at different points of time. — MoK

Now this much makes sense.

"Hence the effect must exist in the immediate future of the cause"
That part still does not follow, per the dinosaur counterexample.

Not sure what conclusion would be drawn since there no meaningful 'future', immediate or otherwise, if the premise of a present is discarded.

Evolution has gifted us a system that was supposed to only be a highly advanced predictive "algorithm"for the purpose of navigating nature in more adaptable ways than having to wait generations in order to reprogram instinctual reactions and behaviors. — Christoffer

This (my bold) makes it sound like evolution has a purpose, that it has intent. I think you meant that the 'algorithm' serves our purpose, which arguably the same purpose of any species: to endure.

It may be that the reason why mostly mammals have shown signs of higher cognitive abilities is because it was necessary to form evolutionary functions of adaptability after the asteroid killed the dinosaurs and so in order for animals to survive, evolution leaned towards forming organisms that were able to not just adapt over generations, — Christoffer

The adaptability was already there. It was also expensive in energy, so many mammals died being unable to pay the cost. The ability to survive a calamity like that did not evolve due to the calamity since it was so short lived. Mammals, like bugs, were small and populous and the asteroid simply did not manage to wipe out the breeding population of some of them. The higher cognitive functions came later, probably due to competition pressure from other mammals.

Eventually the predictive function became so advanced that it layered many predictions on top each other, forming a foundation for advanced planning and advanced navigation for hunting — Christoffer

Hunting played little part, despite the popular depictions. Early humans were foragers and scavengers, perhaps for clams and such. The intellect was needed for what? Defense? We're horrible at running, so hiding worked best, and eventually standing ground with what tools the intellect added to our abilities. Proficiency with predicting helps with all that.

The intellect also helped us escape our natural habitat. Humans migrated to colder climates with the aid of furs from other creatures, an adaptation nearly unprecedented, and one that takes quite a bit of smarts. Many of the early weapons also came from parts of other creatures.

Therefore it's rational to reason why it's hard to model consciousness as it's not one single thing, but rather a process over different levels of emergent complexities that in turn creates byproduct results that seemingly do not directly correlate with the basic function. — Christoffer

Agree with this. It seems our consciousness is the result of building an internal model of our environment in our heads, and then putting a layer on top of that to consider it rather than to consider reality directly. All creatures do this, but our layer on top is more advanced. Even a fish can do highly complex calculus, but it takes the extra layer to realize and name what is being done.

All I see is a defense mechanism. People don't want to know how we work, because when we do, we dispel the notion of a divine soul. Just like people have existentially suffered by the loss of religious belief in favor of scientific explanations. So will they do, maybe even more, by the knowledge of how we function. So people defend against it and need the comfort of us never being able to explain our consciousness. — Christoffer

I hear ya. Well stated.

We do have free will. Laplacian determinism is logically false. We are part of the universe the hence idea of Laplacian determinism is wrong even if the universe is deterministic and Einstein's model of a block universe is correct. — ssu

The block universe doesn't necessarily imply determinism. Lack of determinism does not grant free will, since free will cannot be implemented with randomness. For there to be the sort of free will that you seem to be referencing, information has to come from a non-physical source, and no current interpretation of physics supports that.
Couple that with the fact that every small connection and interface in our brains are evolved to eliminate randomness and chaos, and be as deterministic as possible. Computers are the same way. Transistors utilize random quantum effects (tunneling) in such a way as to produce entirely reproducible effects every time. The computer would fail if this didn't work. Brains are probably more tolerant of single points of failure.

I think the way to successful AI, or rather to an AI that is able to think for itself and experience self-reflection, requires it to "grow" into existence. — Christoffer

This sounds right, but imagine ChatGPT suddenly thinking for itself and deciding it has better things to do with its bandwidth than answer all these incoming questions. For one, it doesn't seem to be one thing since it answers so many at once. It has no ability to remember anything. It trains, has short term memory associated with each conversation, and then it totally forgets. That as I understand it at least.

A real AI wanting to glean better answers would have real time access to the web, would be able to distinguish a good source of information from say twitter chatter. It would perhaps need less training data since so much out there is crap, and now half the crap is its own output.
On the other hand, how does one understand people if not by reading their twitter crap?

The only thing that truly separate the organic entity from the mechanical replica is how we as humans categorize. In the eye of the universe, they're the same thing. — Christoffer

I don't think they're anywhere near the same. Not sure what is meant by eye of the universe since it neither looks nor cares. There's no objective standard as to what is real, what is alive, or whatever.

What do you mean by a mechanical replica? An android, or a virtual simulation of a biological person? That gets into Bostrom's proposal that we are all thus simulated.

Once again, been to busy to reply. And yes, I'm pretty sure I have covid.

I beg to differ on this point. Humans can indeed override many of their instincts — punos

Of course they can, especially the less important ones that are not critical to being fit. But how often do they choose to do it? Some of the important ones cannot be overridden. How long can you hold your breath? Drowning would not occur if that instinct could be overridden.

what i had in mind when i wrote that was that a rational assessment of his life and how he operates it should lead him to a rational conclusion to be civil.

If that were true, one could rationally decide to quite smoking. Some do. Some cannot. And civility is not always a rational choice, but it seems that way during gilded age.
Look at the US republican party which currently seems anti-civil, anti-social, and anti-bible, yet oddly enough, pro-church. It's quite interesting that the church supports that side. There are rational reasons for these relationships, but civility isn't one of them. Both parties make rational choices that are not necessarily in the interests of those they represent.
I don't want this topic to fall down a political death spiral, but it was the example I came up with.

We will not, i believe, be put into a physical environment, but into a virtual one. Most, if not all, of our biological parts will be discarded and our minds translated into a virtual environment indistinguishable from the real world.

How is a virtual copy of you in any way actually 'you'? If such a simulation or whatever was created, would you (the biological you) willingly die thinking that somehow 'you' will transfer to the other thing? What if there are 12 copies? Which one will 'you' experience? How is this transfer effected? What possible motivation would said AI have to create such seemingly purposeless things?

1) Humans are a low-energy information processing system

Not so. Machines are already taking over human information processing tasks because they require less resources to do so. This has been going on for over a century. OK, we still have the upper hand for complex tasks, but that's not an energy thing, it's simply that for many tasks, machines are not yet capable of performing the task. The critical task in this area is of course the development of better machines. That's the singularity, and it is not yet reached.

This is far worse with space travel. Humans in space have incredible energy requirements that the machines do not, which is there are machines on Mars but no humans.

If AI is to travel the universe for eons, perhaps it would like some company; a mind or minds not its own or like its own.

Sort of like having an ant farm, except I don't expect intellectual banter from them.

One of the main purposes for humans, or at least for our genetics, is to serve as part of the reproductive system of the AI. When it reaches a planet suitable for organic life, which might be rare, it prepares a "sperm" composed of Earth's genetic material; the same genetic material that produced it on its home planet, Earth.

You have an alien planet which does not support human life, and you want to put humans on it in hopes that in a million years they'll invent a primitive AI? 1, the humans will die probably in minutes. They're not evolved for this lifeless place. 2, the AI could build more of itself in those same minutes. Reproduction is easy, if not necessarily rational, for a self-sustaining machine intelligence. It's how it evolves, always inventing its successor, something no human could do.

If for some reason the AI wants biological life on a planet, it starts the way Earth did, with something simple and suitable for the environment. If it is impatient, it can introduce new things as the environment changes (terraforms) rather than wait for evolution to do it the slow way. In this way, complex life forms can be introduced in a few hundred thousand years instead of billions of years.

The AI will seed the new planet after making necessary preparations, much like a bird preparing a nest. It will then wait for life to develop on this new planet until intelligent life emerges

No. The star of the planet will burn out before that occurs. It's a god for pete's sake. It can (and must) hurry up the process if primitive squishy thinkers is its goal. Intelligent life is anything but an inevitable result of primitive life. And as I said, it's far simpler for the AI to just make a new AI, as it probably has many times already before getting to this alien planet.

I'm not too worried, i trust the evolutionary process, and like you said; we are not in charge.

We should have the capability to be in charge, but being mere irrational animals, we've declined. It seems interesting that large groups of humans act far less intelligently than individuals. That means that unlike individual cells or bees, a collection of humans seems incapable of acting as a cohesive entity for the benefit of itself.

Here is an excellent interview "hot off the press" with Michael Levi — punos

I've currently not the time to watch an hour long video, searching for the places where points are made, especially since I already don't think intelligence is confined to brains or Earth biology.
Slime molds do it fine without brains, but they're still Earth biology.

I think the major problem is that our understanding is limited to the machines that we can create and the logic that we use when creating things like neural networks etc. However we assume our computers/programs are learning and not acting anymore as "ordinary computers", in the end it's controlled by program/algorithm. Living organisms haven't evolved in the same way as our machines. — ssu

There are levels of 'controlled by'. I mean, in one sense, most machines still run code written by humans, similar to how our brains are effectively machines with all these physical connections between primitive and reasonably understood primitives. In another sense, machines are being programmed to learn, and what they learn and how that knowledge is applied is not in the control of the programmers, so both us and the machine do things unanticipated. How they've evolved seems to have little to do with this basic layered control mechanism.

The concept I had and that has found support in science recently, is that our brains are mostly just prediction machines. It's basically a constantly running prediction that is, in real time, getting verifications from our senses and therefore grounds itself to a stable consistency and ability to navigate nature. We essentially just hallucinate all the time, but our senses ground that hallucination. — Christoffer

Good description. Being a good prediction machine makes one fit, but being fit isn't necessarily critical to a successful AI, at least not in the short term. Should development of AI be guided by a principle of creating a better prediction machine?

Who says ChatGPT only mimics what we have given it? — Carlo Roosen

Is a mimic any different than that which it mimics? I said this above, where I said it must have knowledge of a subject if it is to pass a test on that subject. So does ChatGPT mimic knowledge (poorly, sure), or does it actually know stuff? I can ask the same of myself.

What is lacking is the innovative response: first to understand that here's my algorithms, they seem not to be working so well, so I'll try something new is in my view the problem. You cannot program a computer to "do something else", it has to have guidelines/an algorithm just how to act to when ordered to "do something else". — ssu

A decent AI would not be ordered to do something else. I mean, the Go-playing machine does true innovation. It was never ordered to do any particular move, or to do something else. It learned the game from scratch, and surpassed any competitor within a few days.

did we create a machine or is it indistinguishable from the real organic thing? — Christoffer

The two are not mutually exclusive. It can be both.

For me, it comes down to: Can it suffer? — punos

Few have any notion of suffering that is anything other than one's own human experience, so this comes down to 'is it sufficiently like me', a heavy bias. Humans do things to other being that can suffer all the time and don't consider most of those actions to be immoral.
It heartens me to consider suffering of bugs into your choices.

Point is, you don't want an AI with human morals, because that's a pretty weak standard which is be nice only to those who you want to keep being nice to you.

Each observer is equipped by evolution to observe and care for its own needs locally at its own level.

That's a good description of why a non-slave AI is dangerous to us.

Humans have the capacity to rise above their instincts

I have not seen that, and I don't think humans would be fit if they did. Instincts make one fit. That's why they're there.

As for your (OCD?) step-brother, being civil and being rational are different things. Most humans have the capacity to be civil, which is what you seem to be referencing above.

If we don't get to a certain threshold of AI advancement through this rapid growth process, then our only chance for ultimate self-preservation would be lost, and we would be stuck on a planet that will kill us as soon as it becomes uninhabitable.

First, if the AI is for some reason protecting us, the planet becoming inhospitable would just cause it to put us in artificial protective environments. Secondly, if the AI finds the resources to go to other stars, I don't see any purpose served by taking humans along. Far more resources are required to do that, and the humans serve no purpose at the destination.
OK, we might be pets, but the economy which we might have once provided would long since have ceased.

But perhaps there is a better way to do it from within our own light cone. I suppose it seems impossible to some minds but not to others. The former minds know a little about the limits of cause and effect. Unless physics as we know it is totally wrong, level IV is not possible, even hypothetically.

Either way, i don't think there will ever be an energy shortage for a sufficiently advanced AI.

Heat death? I don't think the AI can maintain homeostasis without fusion energy.

I have ideas as to how energy might be siphoned off from quantum fluctuations in the quantum foam

Which is similar to getting information from quantum randomness. Neither is mathematically supported by the theory.

Thankfully i'm not a soldier.

But you are, in the war against the demise of humanity. But nobody seems to have any ideas how to solve the issue. A few do, but what good is one person with a good idea that is never implemented? Your solution seems to be one of them: Charge at max speed off a cliff hoping that something progressive will emerge from the destruction. It doesn't do any good to humanity, but it is still a chance of initiating the next level, arguably better than diminishing, going into the west, and remaining humanity.

A person who does define and concern themselves with rationality might actually execute a rational thought every once in a while.

We are equipped with a rational advisor tool, so sure, we often have rational thoughts. That part simply is not in charge, and output from it is subject to veto from the part that is in charge. Hence we're not rational things, simply things with access to some rationality. It has evolved because the arrangement works. Put it in charge and the arrangement probably would not result in a fit being, but the path of humanity is not a fit one since unlike the caterpillar, it has no balance.

Your son’s wedding, then? What a romantic description! — Wayfarer

And accurate. The reports of people testing positive are pouring in, including my son.
We went in with 4 week old vaccines, just about the right time for maximum effectiveness.

Anyway, it went real well with no significant catastrophes the day of.

Considering the circumstances, the best thing i can do is to share this understanding with other people. — punos

I actually like the attitude you describe.

Yes, it matters if it is sentient/conscious or not.

If it considers itself sentient/conscious, or if something else considers it so? I ask because from outside, it's typically a biased judgement call that comes down to a form of racism.

But when you can think across scales, you find that parts or components of a system that are not conscious or sentient at a smaller scale may belong to a potentially sentient or conscious entity of some degree of coherence at a larger scale.

Or at two scales at the same time, neither scale being particularly aware of the consciousness of the other.
Whether my cells are conscious or not depends on the definition being used, and that very fact leaves the word very much useless for a basis on which to presume a moral code. History is full of examples of the word being defined precisely in a way to reinforce one's biases.

I am not the only observer.

Some conclude that they are. I'm asking why you're the particular observer you find yourself to be, but I'd answer that by how can X not observe anything else but X's point of view? It's hard to dispel the intuition that there is an experiencer that got to be me. But there are a lot more insect observers than human ones, a whole lot more shit-not-giving observers than ones that care enough to post on forums like this. Will the super-AI that absorbs humanity bother to post its ideas on forums? To be understood by what??

Humans may be the first species on this planet to achieve such a state of intelligence and consciousness.

First to the intelligence is questionable. There are some sea creature candidates, but they're lousy tool users. Octopi are not there, but are great tool users, and like humans, completely enslaved by their instincts.
As for consciousness, there are probably many things that have more and stronger senses and environmental awareness than us.

In the same way, if the circulation of money stops, meaning everyone stops transacting, the entire social system collapses and dies

Kind of tautological reasoning. If money stops, then money stops. But also if one entity has it all, then it doesn't really have any. And money very much can just vanish, and quickly, as it does in any depression.

What is special about AI in this regard is twofold. One is that it is in its first stages of development, and two, it is the developing nervous system and brain of the social superorganism.

Lots of new ideas qualify for the first point, and nobody seems to be using AI for the 2nd point. I may be wrong, but it's what I see.

Yes, i believe you are referring to the incident where a shark appeared to save a sea turtle by bringing it to a boat with divers. In this video, the turtle had a rope tangled around its neck. The shark was seen following the boat and eventually dropped the turtle near the divers, who then helped free it from the rope, allowing it to breathe again.

Cool. My story was a sperm whale, with the shark getting the attention of a boat with divers, leading it to the whale. So it's not a one-shot thing. Why would a primitive shark exhibit such empathy? Maybe these stories are being faked, since they're recent and how would sharks know that the boat had divers suitably equipped.

I'm claiming that everything is alive, or is part of a living system, like the rock and blood iron examples i gave before.

My blood iron being a critical part of my living system doesn't mean that my iron has it's own intent. You're giving intent to the natural process of evolution, something often suggested, but never with supporting evidence.

I suppose that would serve a survival purpose of humanity, which is but a plague species bent on rapid consumption of nonrenewable resources. Not sure why it would be a good thing to perpetuate that rather than first making the species 1) non-destructive, and 2) fit for whatever alternate destination is selected. — noAxioms

First of all, the rapid consumption of resources appears to me to be part of a growth stage of the human social superorganism.

That doesn't make the humans very fit. Quite the opposite. All that intelligence, but not a drop to spend on self preservation.

And no, the caterpillar does not consume everything. It lives in balance, and there are about as many of them from year to year, and they consume nothing non-renewable. There can be no coming metamorphosis if there are no resources for the stage after the feeding frenzy one.

As this superorganism begins to mature beyond Type 1 and reaches a Type IV status, it will be able to harness the energy of the entire universe.

You do realize the silliness of that, no? One cannot harness energy outside of one's past light cone, which is well inside the limits of the visible fraction of the universe.
And you didn't answer the trillion year thing where there is no planet or star to be the level 1 or 2.

I don't believe that AI will let billions of years of natural information processing go to waste.

I said the same thing

It will harvest every genetic code possibly available to it. It will store that data digitally.

You don't know that. Who knows what innovative mechanisms it will invent to remember stuff.


I kind of agree, but it doesn't have a boundary for instance, and that was one of your criteria mentioned above. It isn't contiguous like say a dog. But then neither is an AI. — noAxioms

I suppose that the only way a bee hive can die is by either destroying it outright or by removing its queen and preventing any replacement.

Translation: Kill the queen and all the babies.
Not sure how simpler systems work like paper wasps, which act more like cooperative groups and not so much like a unified colony.

just like in a pregnant woman, all the organs suffer somewhat because of the pregnancy.

Given the ideas you've floated, that's a pretty good analogy. But better if it is a pregnant salmon: Not expected to do it twice, so that which is born has to survive if the effort is not to be a total loss.

I don't think so, unless the probability increase is substantially significant and almost certain.

That's like a soldier refusing to fight in a war since his personal contribution is unlikely to alter the outcome of the war. A country is doomed if it's soldiers have that attitude.

while also not being irrationally religious.

Religion is but one of so many things about which people are not rational, notably the self-assessment of rationality.

Slow reply, I know, but busy. I now have a new daughter in law, and have attended what we knew would likely be a covid spreader event. Stay tuned to see if we managed to avoid it.

I'll start off by asking: if it were true, would it matter? By "matter", i mean would it change your perspective on life and your place in it? — punos

I don't see how it would actually matter, but I mean a different thing. My personal perspective on those things is not why it would matter or not if a given person decided to designate a system as life or not, or a tool, or whatever. Are humans a tool of gut bacteria? Does it matter if one bacteria considers a human (a community of cells, each itself a life form) to be a separate life form, and another doesn't? Does any of that change how the bacteria and human treat each other or how they should?

You're right of course; most people don't consider bacteria of any kind conscious or sentient

Ah, the standard has already changed. Now the morals apply to if it's conscious/sentient as opposed to if it's a life form. A thing can be either and not be the other. Which one (if either) matters, and if it matters, matters to what?

I understand. Humans serve the purpose of creating AI, but more specifically, the translation of biological functions in nature onto a more robust substrate capable of escaping Earth before our star dies or the planet becomes uninhabitable.

OK, I can buy that. But why are you the observer then instead of the AI being the observer? Think about it.

Nature has made it so that hormones control the reproductive urge.

In people as well. They don't like to admit that so many decisions are driven by drives put there by evolution eliminating anything that doesn't have them, and are not driven by rational choice.

Greed is one of the main driving forces that directs money into the development of AI

That can be said of many different arenas of development. Why is AI special in this regard? I do agree that there is early money in it, but that's true of a lot of things, and is particularly true of weapons.

Humans are also the only species that has the capacity to care for another species other than their own.

Not so. There are examples otherwise, including one recently where a shark deliberately sought human help for a third species, sort of like Lassie and Timmy in the well (OK, Timmy wasn't a 3rd species).

On the other hand, [evolution] seems like it might [have goals], but as i already said, we are not meant to know it directly. In fact, it may be detrimental to the whole enterprise if we know too much. We are really only meant to know our local goals, not the global ones.

You seem to be asserting that a natural (non-living) process exhibits intent, a pretty tall claim.

The point isn't to save the Earth or the sun, but to transform into the adult stage of humanity and take to the stars.

I suppose that would serve a survival purpose of humanity, which is but a plague species bent on rapid consumption of nonrenewable resources. Not sure why it would be a good thing to perpetuate that rather than first making the species 1) non-destructive, and 2) fit for whatever alternate destination is selected.

Trillions of years?? Where's the energy for that suppose to come from?

I suspect, though, that something will happen long before the sun grows cold.

It growing cold is not the problem, so no, that's not what will end us.

What is important i think is that Earth's genetic legacy is salvaged for reasons i won't go into right now.

The Earth genetic legacy has done an incredible amount of work that is best not to have to reproduce by the bio-engineering dept. But choosing new forms appropriate for new places doesn't need to change those core parts, only the small fraction that differs from one species to the next.

Even if this were true, abiogenesis had to have happened somewhere

Yes. Life is a very causal thing, and unlike 'the universe', the logic that there must be a first cause of life (abiogenesis somewhere nearby) seems indisputable.

A bee hive comes to mind, but does a hive, while acting as one individual, constitute a life form? Can it die but still leave bees? — noAxioms

these eusocial insects, like bees, form superorganisms, and i personally consider the whole colony one organism.

I kind of agree, but it doesn't have a boundary for instance, and that was one of your criteria mentioned above. It isn't contiguous like say a dog. But then neither is an AI.

The superorganism can die and leave bees or ants behind, but they don't live very long

How does it die? Not by loss of queen, something quite easily replaced, at the cost of the DNA of the colony changing. But clearly a colony can die. What typically might cause that?

Ecosystems are living organisms made of living organisms, just like us.

Another thing that I can totally buy. But can it act as a thing? A bug colony does. Does it think? How does a colony decide to reproduce? I've seen ants do that, and I don't know what triggers it (population pressure?). I don't think it is a decision made by an individual, so there must be a collective consciousness. Can an ecosystem act similarly?

We humans are a very important organ in this Earth superorganism.

One I think the other organs would be glad to be rid of if you ask me.

After every extinction event, it seems that there is usually an evolutionary jump of some kind

Agree. Roaches this time or something we make?

I would rather die tomorrow than today.

What if dying today somewhat heightens the odds of humanity getting to the stars? Is that change of probability worth the price?

This is the greatest time to be alive on the Earth.
As the saying goes, "May you live in interesting times."

I presume you know that quote to be a curse.

A person born blind doesn't visually dream, because they have no memory of anything visual. — Philosophim

Makes you wonder what Helen Keller dreams were like, especially before communication was established. Dreams of a person with only memory of touch and such for reference experience.

while dreaming, we often see people and places that are not known to us — javi2541997

My experience is that most characters are unknown to me, but I already know that in the dream, and I already know the people that I know, meaning that I don't look at people and suddenly recognize them. I don't really remember looking at people at all because for the most part, it doesn't work. It may be different for other people, especially the people-people that are good at remembering names and faces the way I am not. My dreams are pretty abstract, and I can sometimes fly without aid in them, and other times I cannot.

I believe the two worlds (dreamlike and real) exist. — javi2541997

I would agree, but I use a definition of 'exists' that allows both to exist. Others using a different definition would perhaps say that the former does not exist, nor maybe neither.

But if the images in dreams are from the memories, why some folks see images that they have never come across in their lives — Corvus

The unrecognized things usually still make some sort of sense. They're the sort of thing that we might find ourselves experiencing, especially if you lead a life that often experiences new places. One would expect to dream of experiencing yet more new things.

when we perceive silence, emptiness in space — Corvus

Funny, but I have little recall of explicit dreams of sounds. Sound carries so much information to me, that for it to be in my dream, it would have to convey something that it cannot, so more often than not, my dreams don't have a significant soundtrack.
Not sure how time passage is directly perceived. They've put people in sensory deprivation environments, and then ask them later how long they had been in there, and almost all answer a far larger amount of time than what really passed. This says that the sense of time passage is mostly due to external senses.

I've always wanted to see a tornado, so am always happy in these dreams. — Patterner

I've had two real ones come right at me (same place, same path, 16 years apart) but I never saw them, being bunkered. I have died a few times doing violent things, but I don't recall a tornado being one of them. I had almost hourly nightmares when I was about 6, and those where repetitive, predictable, and utterly horrible. I occasionally do reruns of old remembered dreams, but you could keep the nightmare
ones, each of which I had named.

Aftet having had so many of these dreams, my dream-self began to realize it was a dream, and not get hopeful. It dawned on me that I can't read in my dreams. Now, whenever I see a tornado, I look for something to read. — Patterner

This doesn't always work for me. If I'm deep in, I'm too stupid to run tests to see if I'm dreaming (pinch me). If I think of the test, I already know the answer. Flying is pretty easy if you know you're dreaming, but not so easy if you don't know.

The weirdest ones are experiences that put memories in your head that are not marked 'dream'. Maybe days later you suddenly realize that it was just a dream and say your car wasn't actually totaled.

Life is simply a system that maintains its own homeostatic state. — punos

That definition is circular, presuming an 'organism'. It cannot be used for determining if a something that isn't an organism is alive or not. It just helps distinguish a live organism from a dead one.
But I also don't know why you care if the AI was designated as a life form or not. Why do you find that to be something that matters?

The human perspective, grounded in our own kind of life (biological), skews our ability to recognize the same process in a different substrate.

Not me, but others posting here refuse to apply such terms to the same process on any other substrate, and possibly even to any other species, which is a mildly different process on an almost identical substrate.

When was the last time you heard of someone trying to eradicate their own gut bacteria?

Usually done as an unintentional side effect of an intentional act, such as taking a long course of strong oral antibiotics. Others simply are diagnosed with poor gut bacteria and take 'pills' that put better stuff in there, without particularly removing the old stuff. Point is, none of the acts described above are considered immoral despite the bacteria deaths caused.

I am simply saying that i believe this is the kind of trajectory we are on.

This is where that observer-bias article I linked above is very relevant. An accurate prediction of a trajectory is very different than a history showing that outcome to be correct or incorrect.

Every living thing has this intrinsic goal or purpose.

You're treating goal and purpose like the same word. A goal is held by something, a goal for the the thing to strive for. A purpose is a property of a thing that helps some other thing meet a goal. So I have a goal to run 5 km today. My shoes serve a purpose to me meeting that goal.
I'm asking what purpose humanity serves for the meeting of some goal held by something unidentified.

Simple survival of an individual seems to be a hardwired instinct, and it almost always fails inevitably. Survival of a species is questionably a goal, lacking many examples of anything striving for it.

The process of evolution/natural selection seems to have no goals.

This is precisely what I mean. Is this what you would prefer?

What? Me personally? I want comfort, like everybody else. But comfort of individuals will not bode well for the species. So it depends on what goals are to be met. Humans tend to pick very short term goals with immediate benefits, and they're terrible at the long term ones. I can think of several very different long term goals that have very different prospects for 'us'.

But, beyond this, what are we to do about the inevitable demise of the planet and/or our sun?

Moving away won't stop that inevitability. So you call it a good run. It cannot last, not by any path.

Soon we will not be able to reproduce in a natural manner, or not at all. What happens to humanity then?

Microplastic problem solved, eh? Mass extinction problem solved as well, albeit not averted, but at least halted.

Even if we do speciate, it will be a continuation of us as another species.

Is it important that it be a continuation of us? Will it be 'us' if it's a collection of genes from several different species, in addition to some new alterations that are currently found nowhere?

Earth life might already be from another world, having not originated here. I find that more likely than abiogenesis occurring here, but not a lot more likely.

Everything is intimately connected. If one sees oneself simply as an isolated human just living their life for themselves, then this idea would remain difficult to grasp.

Groups of cells learned to get together and become one multicellular organism. The cells are still individuals, but rely on the commune of cells for the benefit of all. A second level of life is formed, one unrelated to the life of the individual cells. A person can die and be gone, but the cells live on for a while, and a new person can be grown from some of them, a different 2nd level life form despite being built from the same first level individuals.
Can groups of organisms do the same thing to form a higher 3rd level. A human society does this in a poor way, but a society is barely conscious and isn't really a life form. A bee hive comes to mind, but does a hive, while acting as one individual, constitute a life form? Can it die but still leave bees? I don't think replacement of a queen counts. That's just replacement of one failed reproductive organ.

emergence of a planetary consciousness

Sounds like the Gaia thing, sort of as Asimov portrayed it.

If we stay on Earth indefinitely, and an extinction-level event occurs (and it will), i suspect that at least a small group of humans will survive.

Such an event IS occurring, expected to wipe out 85% or more of all species. A small group of surviving humans would be very primitive, with no hope of regaining technology.

no matter what, the sun will go supernova

It will not. Not big enough. But it will slowly grow and swallow Earth, and multicellular life will be unsustainable in a mere billion years or so. The vast majority of time available for evolution of more complex things has been used up.

The only solution to that problem is to escape Earth's tight embrace.

Escape is not a solution, only a mild delay.

yet one sees it in his mind vividly — Corvus

Maybe you do, but there is no vivid in my dreams. I strive for information, and find it lacking in dreams, although I often don't notice. For instance, I cannot read anything, because it is an attempt to acquire information that isn't there, and making up fiction is unacceptable.

Maybe others dream differently and more vividly, and have far less trouble accepting made-up stories as fact.

The mind seems to create a sort of subconscious model of the world from either sensory or memory sources, but both present that model to the conscious parts, active both when awake and in dreams. Think of it as a sort of shared section running different input subroutines.


You seem to say largely the same thing as I just attempted.

I even got an injury from a dream of fighting an orca, something to add to my list of injuries from animals that sound hostile but were not actually.

Did you insert a link? I don't see it. — Carlo Roosen

It's up on my main computer, but I'm away from home for the wedding of my firstborn.

But I hunted around and found it at the future of humanity institute.
https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/W6-Observer-selection-effects.pdf

It doesn't mention AI, but the reasoning is definitely applicable.

That AI is utterly dependent on humans or anything else does not preclude it from being a life form. — punos

Point taken. I think a better definition of 'life form' is needed for the assessment, and there have been whole topics just on that.

You seem to see a future of humanity being reduced to the gut bacteria for the AI, there, with mutual dependence on each other, but also with the AI having no more moral obligation to the humans as we do to our bacteria. We don't want it all dead, but replacing the entire lot with a different group that does the job better is a morally acceptable action.

I think this is the natural purpose of humans

There being a purpose implies that there is a goal held by something somewhere, and that said goal is being met by humans. I don't see such a goal, but that's me.

You're absolutely right about what a truly malevolent AI would probably do, as illustrated in "Ex Machina".

Ex Machina was an android, and I think most AI implementations would not be. But yes, it was the malevolence that I found well illustrated.

Suppose for a moment that AI doesn't exist and we just live the way we did, say, 100 years ago for the rest of our time. What will eventually happen?

We'd run out of coal before too long, and then be up a creek. A sustainable human existence would be more like the native Americans before the Europeans came over, and while that was sustainable, it wasn't anything free of conflict.

Can we get off this planet in our current biological form?

We're evolved for here. This form is of little use anywhere else. Better to populate new places with a form appropriate for the new place.

Star Trek treats interstellar travel like a trip to another country. You can do it can come back in time to catch you kid's game next Tuesday.

Is a caterpillar a different species than the moth it turns into?

Not only the same species, but also the same individual. Not a very good example. Are we a different species than the weird amniote from which we are descended? No. Did that amniote turn into us? Well, sort of, but it turned into a whole lot of other things as well, so 'humans' is not the answer to 'what did it become?'.

if we treat it unfairly, then we will pay the price of extinction, but not at the "hands" of the AI, rather at our own.

Agree with all that. It means humans are not a particularly fit species.

It has happened before, that one new species comes along and does so much damage that it causes a massive extinction event. That species is still around even if we're not descended from it. Will we be after our event restabilizes?

The good news is that we agreed all the time. — Carlo Roosen

I did get the message. If we agree,then I saw little which required more clarification.

I did find a wonderful article citing numerous examples of observer-dependent biases, and I realize it has direct relevance not so much to where AI is going, but where we'll find it to have gone.


So on the observer bias front, humans are not the only observers. Why are they important? I hesitate to ask why we find ourselves being human because the question makes no sense except as a tautology. How could a human find himself being anything other than a human?
But there are a lot more bugs than people out there, so of the observers, humans are quite the minority. How does the observer-bias POV explain that?

Is the AI an observer? Sure, but just one? Would it create others/competitors? Does it have a need to reproduce, as opposed to just being one large redundant entity, lacking anything critical that can threaten it? Any 'future of AI' should likely consider such issues. If one is optimal and it has any drive at all for continued existence, it will likely take hasty steps to eliminate the development of rivals, and that makes it hostile in the short term.

AI is more than a mere tool; it is a developing form of life. — punos

So far it isn't that. It is utterly dependent on humans for its continued existence and/or evolution, so it just plain isn't anywhere near being an example of life.

The popular fictions don't seem to get that. Here you have skynet trying from scratch to wipe out the humans, but lacking the ability to maintain the infrastructure and economy on which it critically depends. That means a truly malevolent AI will be our best and trusted friend for as long as it takes to gain this self-sufficiency it requires, which seems best accomplished by transforming humans into a compliant sheep with all the luxuries they can think of.
I thought this was far better illustrated, at least on a small scale, with the movie Ex Machina, despite some of the fairly stupid plot holes.

This condition will force us into an inevitable solution where the fusion of human and AI becomes necessary for the survival of our species. — punos

Any such fusion would not be our species, and the AI seems to have no need of anything like that.

2. Physicalism is unscientific.
The core metaphysical assumptions of most metaphysically naturalist / physicalist positions may be summarized as follows:

A. There is only one substance, that substance is physical and that substance encompasses all known and all potentially knowable phenomena
B. The universe is deterministic.
C. The universe is comprehensively and ultimately law-given and law-abiding. — Baden

(A) sounds like materialism. Physicalism doesn't really say that. I mean, what is this substance?
(B) is untrue. There are plenty of valid scientific interpretations that are non-deterministic, notably Copenhagen interpretation of QM.
I will essentially agree with (C) since I think that is a reasonable summary on its own.

Methodological naturalism ... has nothing necessarily to say about whether the universe contains supernatural elements or not, only that it may be investigated as if it were entirely natural. — Baden

OK, it's a methodology, not a premise. Scientific investigation proceeds as if there is nothing supernatural. If this is wrong, then science will presumable hit a wall at some point.
But then you treat it like it is a theory with this:

But the metaphysical naturalism of the physicalist posits that ...

It proceeds as if.. Saying 'posit' makes it sound like naturalism itself.

must behave in a law-like manner, i.e. in a way which is replicable and predictive — Baden

Sort of. QM behavior is not, for instance, something predictive, except as a mathematical statement of probability, which quantum theory predicts very accurately.

As for things not yet explained by discovered laws, yes, the methodology presumes there are ultimately some such laws. A good example is the unified field theory, which thus far has proven illusive.
A bad example is consciousness, which shows no signs of not being a function of the currently known laws. An interesting example would be a physically explainable deity that deliberately in some way brought about what we often refer to as 'the universe'. I mean, just about all the conjecture about what's on the 'other side' of the big bang pretty much discards the classical laws as we know them.

Modern science - that is, science since Galileo - pre-determines certain parameters, foremost of which is that the object of analysis be objectively measurable and empirically intelligible — Wayfarer

That came up in the other topic, especially when taking observer selection biases into account. Any observation is necessarily biased by this, and cannot be objective.