Notice the quotes around 'bigger'. What I think you actually mean is, 'many'. They're very different things. — Wayfarer

They are very different things, and I meant ‘bigger’. Still one universe, but more of it than the story you found comfortable as a child. There were other universe theories (the only reasonable alternative to the intelligent design argument) long before Everett came along, so having other worlds is hardly a painful step.

Einstein didn't like the uncertainty principle or the 'quantum leap' because he was a determinist.

He also held to locality, so I think he would have liked an interpretation that was both local and deterministic.

The observer problem is a problem because there’s nothing in the maths to indicate where the observer must come into the picture. — Wayfarer

I suspect that decoherence calculations do just that.

This undermines the principle of objectivity

That it does. I’ve discarded that principle, as do most of the interpretations. The science doesn’t care. Quantum theory is not concerned with what goes on in the absence of interaction between systems.

Per your comment, "one also has to deal with how some of them are more probable than others", the basic idea (from Zurek - see the above post) is that paths that are not equally probable can be mathematically reduced to paths that are. For example, a beam splitter with a 2:1 transmission/reflection ratio is equivalent to a beam splitter with a 1:1:1 ratio once a 1:1 beam splitter is added to the transmission path. — Andrew M

What if the ratio isn’t rational?

There's an 'observer effect' in Einsteinian relativity which nobody objects to. That's not the problem. — Andrew M

There is? There are dependencies on frames (what velocity has object X?, a completely frame dependent question since Galileo), but I've not heard that observers have any effect at all. — noAxioms

Yes, I'm referring to frame dependency. — Andrew M

That is a dependency on a choice of coordinate system. No actual observer need be present, or be stationary, in an arbitrary choice of coordinate system. The people on the platform and the train may (or may not) just happen to make different choices. You make different choices for yourself, such as using one frame to describe where your house is, and a completely different one to describe what Neptune is doing (which is moving faster than c in the frame you probably chose for your house).

While the laws of physics are the same for all observers, they may describe things differently from their respective reference frames.

That’s quite different than the interaction (measurement) actually changing the system being measured, which is what this topic is about.

What Einstein does with "special relativity" is to give 'special' status to light, freeing it from the principles of relativity — Metaphysician Undercover

On the contrary, he brought light to be included in the principle of relativity, that it moving at c was such a law of physics that was unchanging, part of the principle of relativity. He freed light speed from being relative to a medium, or possible relative to that which emitted it, in both cases being different from one frame to the next. We each see the same things differently. I see it as bringing light into PoR, and you see it as being taken out.

to allow that its motion is not relative to the motions of material bodies.

But it’s motion IS relative to material bodies, or rather relative to any inertial frame including the one in which the material body is stationary. The second premise says that directly.

This amplifies the 'observer effect' by greatly increasing the possibilities for subtle differences. Now there is a need for principles like time dilation, length contraction, relativistic mass, and things like that.

But those are all frame effects, not observer effect. For instance, a clock coming at you fast will tick slow in your inertial frame, but it will be observed to run fast. Observer effects and frame effects are not the same.
There are objective demonstrations of say length contraction, contraction that is real regardless of observer or choice of frame. That makes length contraction part of ‘a true perspective’, if that phrase is to have any meaning.

Schrödinger's cat (call PETA asap) is both dead and alive (this is impossible in one world) — Agent Smith

Shouldn’t the cat simply be dead or alive then? What’s the difference when the box hasn’t yet been opened, other than the epistemological one where the lab guy doesn’t know the state of the cat. That would be a classic state like a coin tossed and caught, but not yet revealed. What makes the cat different if the world has already split?

They have no choice, if they are being true to Christian doctrine. — universeness

There is no one Christian doctrine. There’s the bible at best, and I don’t think it encourages environmental destruction, but I’m sure one would be able to find passages to support such a view. Bible is great fodder for cherry picking fallacy.

God spends half it's time in the OT, smiting people (one poor guy for dropping a corner of his ark of covenant). He also commands she bears to kill kids for insulting one of his prophets, and he demands murder and ethnic cleansing, all through the OT. It's not our sort of thinking that's the problem, it's the babble in the bible that's the problem, when deluded folks accept such babble, as the written will and character of their creator.

Yea, if God is so perfect, why does Jesus do things so incredibly differently in the NT? Pretty solid evidence of it all being a product of human legend if the story changes with the fashions.

The carbon sequestering is interesting. Does she do it? Is a company that does it competitive with another making a similar product but without the sequestering? What sort of tonnage rate are we talking here? Where is it put that it will stay out of the environment?
— noAxioms
I don't know what 'she' you are referring to? Greta Thunberg? — universeness

Does Greta do it, yes. It’s her suggestion. You didn’t answer the questions, especially those about competitiveness.

Not until you offer a the details needed or at least provide links to the specific maths / logic, that have been published, peer reviewed and contain strong empirical evidence that any claims made are robust and hard to counter.

So you haven’t.
The mathematics is pretty simple. No, it isn’t peer reviewed. I’m asking if you deny it, which apparently you do if it doesn’t come from a journal, which I’m sure it does in some form.
E is say energy use of the planet in a time period. ER is renewable energy and other resources like water (basically all the solar energy and rain falling on all of Earth). EF is fossil energy, anything of which there is but a finite supply. P is population, or people. ‘e’ is per-capita energy usage. The supply equation:
EF = E – ER.
That’s simple enough. Non-renewables make up for what renewables cannot cover.
E = p e
That’s by definition. This is the demand side. Twice as many people, you’ll probably need twice the energy. Over time, p goes up exponentially and E with it. Over time, ER is static. There’s only so much energy to be had. Conservation efforts might reduce e, but not exponentially, so that’s just a temorary relief on E.
Increase in solar farms and such will increase the amount of ER available to the people, but ER being static, there’s a ceiling to that. It also takes non-renewable resource to build the panels, the windmills, and the batteries needed. The lithium requirement is probably more than all the mines can produce, and the stuff needs to be replaced on a regular schedule.
I see an article claiming it can be done at least for now, but don’t see the numbers. It’s just a claim as far as this pop-article goes.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world

We want to explore and develop space not exclusively to solve our problem of excess population

Space was never a solution to excess population. It costs far more to put a person in space than it does to keep him here. Sure, sending colonies to other planets might put new growth out there, but they’re not going to remove any significant number (other than by taking away their resoruces) from Earth in doing so.
The extinction threat is a somewhat better reason, but it would be like preventing a fish from going extinct by building fish-bowls in the trees. Better to just build a bird to put in the trees, and then call it a fish if that’s important to you.

Us, as we are now, us with transhuman augments as well or exclusively transhuman augments, at least until extraterrestial habitats, are made more comfortable and practicable for us, as we are now.

They’ll never be as comfortable as Earth. Where are all the exatons of material going to come from (and of course the energy required, far more than it took to decimate Earth) to make outdoors of an alien place less immediately fatal to us?
Interestingly, Earth did it by sequestering the carbon. Makes you wonder what the place was like say 1.5 billion years ago. If we had a time machine and went there, would it kill us to step out the door? I have some weird ideas about what Earth was like even sort of recently like under 100 MY ago.
How do they even get dust off the ground in those Martian dust storms if the air is less than 1% the pressure here?

What problem was being solved when Hilary climbed mount Everest or when Armstrong first footed the Moon.

Say you done it. Important with the moon since the USA got their butts pretty brutally kicked in the space race before then. Big cold-war motivation. One can always put ‘tech research’ out there. Learn to do stuff. Why do you think it took until Apollo 11 to actually land? The ones before were for learning stuff.

My detailed arguments of why I think so would have to be a different thread about democratic socialism, secular humanism and a resource based global economy.

Well I don’t have enough education to counter what is basically assertions on both our parts, but it seems obvious that the goals of the individual voter correspond little to higher goals, as demonstrated by recent history. Notice I don’t identity those higher goals. There are several, a matter of choosing one to at least the partial exclusion of the others. ‘Don’t ossify’ seems to be one to which you relate. Your fantasy cities seem to do just that. I like the idea of pushing forward and bringing it to the next level, but there are costs to that, most of which won’t be supported by the typical democratic voter who’s primary concern is his immediate personal comfort.

episodes like Trump, do not negate the need for such rigorous (hopefully even fool proof), checks and balances, on all those trusted with power.

But we’re talking about even more power here, enough apparently to render the checks ineffectual. He basically fired anybody related to investigations on his abuses. The authority should not have any authority over said checks, but they always do, especially when the abuses were embraced by an entire political part just because he wore the same color uniform. Police are the same way, almost impossible to prosecute for abuses because the police and even the courts stand behind their own most of the time.

You certainly can consider unpopular decisions as a reason to consider unseating any leader or group of leaders.

Disagree for the same reason the position shouldn’t be one left to the voters. Popularity will doom us. Our cells learned to cooperate into a larger entity, working for the entity and not the individual life forms. One of the first things to change was to select out any personal will that isn’t beneficial to the collective. The sort of authority I’m speaking of needs to act on the benefit of the collective, but here you are suggesting this cannot be done because it would involve actions not popular with the individuals.

you have invoked the 'mommy' model time and time again — universeness

I’ve frequently said that the larger the group of people, the less mature they act as a whole. The term ‘mommy’ is deliberately to emphasize that, an authority over something far to immature to know what’s best for it.

Google is owned by the nefarious rich, who nurture profit more that people, what do you expect from such? Such companies have been ever thus!

Yes, but they started out wanting to do it right. Mozilla (a competitor) is still trying very hard not to be evil.

An ontically fractional electric charge is my attempt to describe an energy field that can only be accurately mathematically modeled to experimental observation by assignment of a fraction, and not by an integer. — ucarr

But I did it with integers, so I guess it's not 'ontically fractional'.

Given this convention, could someone, by convention alone, assign -1/2, -1/3, -1/4... as numbers assigned to the charges of various elementary particles?

I don't see elementary particles with charges with those ratios, so no.

Does it follow from this that what we call the gravitational field of the earth and the gravitational field of its moon are really one gravitational field?

Yes, they are. Both moon and Earth contribute to the gravitational field, and their influence is not bounded, just like a = GM/r² never falls to zero regardless of how distant (r) you get from it.

Does this tell me the hypercube is not a real entity, just an imaginary object of science fiction?

Depends on your definition of being real. I certainly don't see any hypercubes in this universe, but it indeed would take 4 coordinates to define a point within one.

The holographic theory of the universe -- along with the event horizon surrounding a black hole -- adds complexity to the facts about the location of a material object in proximity to extreme gravitation.

Susskind's debate with Hawking re: the conservation of energy of material objects consumed by a black hole and the claims black holes are animate and eventually evaporate add complexity to the facts about where things are ultimately within spacetime.

Evaporation of a black hole doesn't contradict energy conservation. It all comes back as radiation.

Does this tell me that a charge can be considered fractional in a ratio with another charge but not ontically fractional in of itself? — ucarr

You still haven't defined what you mean by 'ontically fractional', so the question is unanswerable. The numbers assigned to the charges of various things are just conventions. They could just as easily have assigned charges of -7, +14 +21 and -21 to down and up quarks, protons and electrons respectively. There's nothing special about where they assigned '1'.

I've been assuming energy fields have some type of physically real boundary. Am I wrong about this?

Fields are 'the value of something at various points in space (or spacetime)'. Since a field by definition covers all of space, it would not seem to have a boundary. The EM field for instance cannot just stop somewhere, beyond which there are no EM effects. I think you're talking about not the field, but a given quantum excitation of one, but then the word 'boundary' only has classical meaning and I cannot figure out how to apply it to a quantum entity.

We humans have reason to believe our world includes a fourth spatial dimension

Spacetime has a time dimension, not a 4th spatial one. Certain higher theories like string theory posit more spatial dimensions, but they're not macroscopic like the three we know.

I've heard a claim the fourth spatial dimension is perpendicular to the other three spatial dimensions.

Doesn't have to be just like the 3 you know don't need to be orthogonal. Making them so just makes the mathematics far simpler. The time dimension is perpendicular to the spatial axes, but the specific direction it goes is an abstract choice. Once 3 dimensions are defined, the 4th no- longer has any choice if they're all to be orthogonal.
All that said, I've not heard any suggestion of a 4th macroscopic spatial dimension. It only takes 3 coordinates to define any point in space, so you'd have to demonstrate that to be incorrect.

I can now explain that the root of my inquiry pertains to the whereness -- I hope you can tolerate the neo-logism -- of material objects and how the perception of whereness is being modified by evolving theories.

Didn't understand any of that. Work from the back: what theories, how are they evolving, and in what way is that relevant to the rest of this?

Ah, ok, so you are basically agreeing, that the tenents of many religions and consequentially, the majority of it's adherents, consider all Earthly experiences/materials/ecology, disposable. — universeness

’Many’ is a strong word. There’s plenty that actually stress betterment in this life. Would ‘the’ Christian church actually agree that it is OK to trash the environment since it is disposable? I don’t think many would (‘the’ in scare quotes because nobody speaks for all). You can write off murder with that logic. OK, the guy is dead, but it must be God’s will or it wouldn’t have happened, thus I’m guilty only of implementing God’s will. That sort of thinking comes from the statement you made.

New carbon capture initiatives are an example of actions which are directly targeted at 'undoing, damage already done, as are all efforts to stop releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere so that such as the ozone layer can recover.

Ozone is recovering. It does fix itself due to efforts as simple as reduction.
The carbon sequestering is interesting. Does she do it? Is a company that does it competitive with another making a similar product but without the sequestering? What sort of tonnage rate are we talking here? Where is it put that it will stay out of the environment?

A great deal of work is also being done to help coral reefs repair.

How does that work if the water is too warm to keep the coral alive?

doomster words such as:
It buys time, but actually makes the crash worse.

Do you know what I mean by those words? Can you refute the mathematics/logic instead of just point out more examples of delay?

Slowing an advance, if continued, can eventually STOP an advance and eventually REVERSE an advance. Each of us must do what we can to help.

It does not follow that slowing an advance can eventually stop it, especially when there’s an ever growing number of consumers each ‘doing what they can’. Heck, it isn’t event the individuals that account for the vast majority of resource consumption.

Could be much the same as life in the box you currently call your home. — universeness

I’m not confined to my home. My food doesn’t come from it. So maybe not so much like that.

Logan's run just suggested you get killed when you get to a certain age.
…
(your Logan's run suggestion would not even solve that one.)

No, I was more referencing the closed environment than the religion built around forced population control (still a viable idea).The problem it solves might be how to live in a place with a hostile environment. Of course the hostile environment was a sham in that movie. People could live outside, unlike on some other world.

We want to explore and develop space not exclusively to solve our problem of excess population or the extinction threat we have due to 'having all on us on one planet only.'

Other than those reasons, what problem is being solved by it? Why exactly does it need to be ‘us’ doing the exploring instead of something more fit, designed for the task.

I want authority that is democratically elected

Absolutely won’t work. The elected guy will be one that does what the people want, not what they need as a whole. It cannot work that way. This authority must be able to make the tough decisions and will not be able to if he needs to get elected.

Authority that is answerable to very strong checks and balances that will instantly kick in, and cause any individual, to be removed from power, quickly and assuredly, if you are guilty of abusing your power and of acting nefariously.

Agree that such a mechanism is needed, but it’s another thing that seems unworkable. Look at the failed efforts to put checks on Trump’s abuse of power.

Your imagery of motherhood models of authority are dictatorial one's.

Probably, except for above checks, some sort of watchdog that doesn’t have a say in the decisions. Very hard to give somebody (or an entity) that sort of power than then still be able to keep it in check. Can’t consider unpopular decisions to be justification for unseating the leader. But the decisions need to be judged in the light of their higher purpose.

A mother may love her children or she may not.

Irrelevant. The authority I speak of simply needs there to be children a long time from now, not necessarily all of them. That’s a different priority, a different sort of love.

I agree that there are very valid security concerns regarding your personal data and exactly who has access to it and could abuse that access. — universeness

Remember about a decade ago when Google’s business model was ‘don’t be evil’. Notice they don’t say that anymore? They found out how very well it pays.

Screening for genetic defects is, I believe, mandatory in some countries that have the facility. — Agent Smith

What do they do if they find a defect? Is it mandatory to eliminate it? That goes against a lot of personal beliefs, and if you’re that sort of person, what’s the point of the mandatory screening?

So do you not accept photons, gluons as the fundamentals of energy, measured in elecrton-volts or joules? — universeness

Not really following this discussion, but calling these things ‘fundamentals of energy’ makes it sound like energy is made of photons and such and not the other way around.

mere fractional parts of elementary particles — ucarr

By definition, elementary particles cannot have parts.

fractional quarks and gluons are expanded into three spatial dimensions — ucarr

I don't know in what way you might consider a quark to be fractional (or worse, 'ontically fractional;) other than it being a part of something non-fundamental like a proton. I also don't know what you're trying to convey with the phrase "expanding into .. dimensions". You seem to be trying to apply classic properties to quantum entities, which doesn't make sense. A quark doesn't have meaningful size, but a pair of them might have a meaningful separation.

Do the fractional charges of quarks play an essential role in the outer boundary of a quark's field excitations? — ucarr

It is meaningful to talk about fractional charge, like a helium nucleus has 2/3 the charge of a lithium nucleus. Again, I don't know what you mean by boundaries of a field excitation. A field is arguably 4D, so the title of this topic might be about being trapped in a 4D world. I don't think an excitation has anything that can meaningfully be considered a boundary. An electron for instance might be measured anywhere with finite probability.

On face value, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics seems the opposite of parsimomious. — Wayfarer

It depends on how parsimony is understood. Many Worlds has the biggest universe but also the fewest postulates. — Andrew M

Wayfarer, I know you have a hard time with a 'bigger' universe, but many of us don't. These same sentiments were expressed when it was discovered that the stars were other suns, and then that there were other galaxies as far as you can see. People balked every time it got bigger, but they got over it.
Personally, I think the other interpretations (at least the realist ones) are tasked with explaining the unitary evolution.

Einstein didn't like God playing dice, but some of the interpretations seem to require it, and I think Einstein would have preferred one of the ones that don't. I don't think any of them were on the table at the time he said that.

The problem that the interpretation should solve is to explain the interference phenomena that we observe. Not merely to predict observations - that's what the formalism does. If Many Worlds were shown to be untenable, Wallace and Deutsch would say that we have no viable explanation (that we know of). — Andrew M

Totally agree here, but I think the effect with which MWI has trouble explaining is the Born rule. It's been a strong piece of criticism.

If you one of the types that actually think that MWI implies the creation/generation of ontologically separate worlds, then one also has to deal with how some of them are more probable than others, that meaning must be given to "X exists more than Y". That issue goes hand in hand with the Born rule thing.

There's an 'observer effect' in Einsteinian relativity which nobody objects to. That's not the problem. — Andrew M

There is? There are dependencies on frames (what velocity has object X?, a completely frame dependent question since Galileo), but I've not heard that observers have any effect at all. That seems to be confined to QM effects.

Deutsch's experiment provides a way of distinguishing between linear interpretations such as RQM/ QBism/Many Worlds and non-linear interpretations such as consciousness-causes-collapse/objective collapse theories like GRW. So it would enable us to rule out an entire class of interpretations. — Andrew M

That sounds cool. In my experience, new evidence just moves the goal posts. An interpretation like the consciousness one will just adjust its story if the linearity of QM can be demonstrated. Others may actually fall out of contention.

In the Wigner's friend thought experiment, the friend's lab is a closed/isolated system. A quantum computer provides a way to realize that isolation for a large, complex and artificially-intelligent entity (the friend AI). Then we can test for interference. — Andrew M

I am actually very unfamiliar with how they do such tests. I mean, the double slit thing is pretty obvious, but how do they test for superposition of spin? Far worse, they've succeeded in putting something large enough to see with the eye, in superposition of vibrating or not. My question is, how was that demonstrated? How might one actually attempt to do the sort of test your're talking about with the computer?

Oh, I completely disagree! Many theist preach, ... that this life, is of very limited importance — universeness

OK, that’s just assigning a completely fictional long-term goal. I agree with that, but was trying to say that they don’t address long term goals in this life.

Climate change would then be god's will.

The mommy will need to deal with that attitude then. No dealing with it unless it’s a mommy.

There are millions of organised folks trying to address the long term issues and they are having significant affect, globally, I don't know why you don't give them the credit they are due.

I seem to see only suggestions of slowing the destruction, not in any way undoing any of it. It buys time, but actually makes the crash worse.

You have heard of folks like Greta Thunberg, yes? Why have you heard of her?

An activist on the right side. She calls for action, but I cannot actually find any suggested action that doesn’t just fall under the category of slowing the advance.

I am probably sensing a 'misinterpretation' incorrectly here but just to be sure, you are not under the impression that they cryogenically freeze you just BEFORE you die, if you sign up for that service, do you? You have been declared medically brain dead before you are frozen so of course 'freezing isn't torture,' it would be, if you were still alive when someone was doing that to you.

If you’re dead, you cannot be revived. So their hope is that the definition of ‘dead’ changes between getting frozen and getting thawed. That definition is always in flux, so it’s a solid bet. No, I don’t think it would be torture either way. You’d certainly not be a conscious popsicle for decades.
I always wonder if I can feel the pain of say surgery and the only reason I’m willing to do it is that I can’t remember the pain. They very much have that fuhgeddaboudit sauce.

About Mars:

I assume we will start with some dome style construction with tech that can best emulate/simulate Earth's conditions but I accept that, initially, it will be a very rough and dangerous existence. — universeness

That’s the life in a box. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to do it here, kind of like Logan’s run? Environment goes to hell, but at least not Mars-hell. But I actually cannot think of something practical that could be engineered to live on Mars except some incredibly static microbes or something.

I don't think much of your 'mommy' comparator.

You don’t want some kind of authority to keep each of the planets in the federation from stepping out of the agreements?

Many folks have done and still do, dedicate their lives to try to improve the lives of everyone else, surely you are willing to admit they exist and support them in everyway you are able to.

Plenty true of most individuals I know. It’s the larger groups that can’t do it. The larger the entity, the less mature their relationship with other such entities.

es, general tenets such as 'from each according to their ability’

Yes, that one. Capitalism has a nice motivator for that, but I have to admit that socialism also can do it, as evidence by the work ethic of more social countries. I suspect much of the problem is identification of a non-cooperative attitude with your peer group. For example, resistance to the Covid vaccines has been assiciated with a conservative viewpoint. Getting a shot is seen as a vote for the wrong party, so they don’t. I lost a sister-in-law to that mentaility. I’m such a proponent of free speech, but I obviously see a downside to it.

A republic is simply free of monarchic or aristocratic rule. A republic can be a socialist democratic republic. There have been some countries labelled as such but those proved to be nothing more than an abuse of the label[/quote]OK, I admit to not being up on the terminology, and agree that no country seems to actually operate under a system that their ‘label’ is supposed to describe.

I think there will come a more enlightened time in the future when there are not many theists left. If that happens, then theistic buildings will need to be repurposed. There are more and more empty churches nowadays. — universeness

That there are. They might return in numbers, but with less fancy large buildings.

Big brother is a nefarious, evil force how much are you concerned that such data is being misused?

I don’t see it much, but there’s a reason that many sorts of surveillance is restricted or just plain illegal. There is very much potential of misuse if you already have the data for supposedly normal purposes.

Make your mark before you’re gone. Make something that can last. That’s as good a purpose as I can think of. — noAxioms
I agree but I would add that your mark must be benevolent or else your life would have been better not lived at all, imo.

Agree except for the logic. Whether my life was better not lived or not depends heavily on the gauge by which the benefit of it is measured.

[/quote]did you think Leonard was positing a situation where superluminal communication or/and superluminal transportation was not impossible?[/quote]I got lost in the jargon enough that I couldn’t make that assessment. It was that for which I was looking.

We're doing it anyway, oui monsieur? — Agent Smith

Maybe. Pretty sure there is gender selection going on in places, and perhaps some gene therapy to help with known genetic issues like breast cancer, but maybe not going so far as to just change an ordinary person into an enhanced one, better in some positive way, not just more free of blatant defects.

Thanks for the post and transcript effort Andrew.

I didn't get where in the 2nd vid that Deutsch suggested some kind of empirical test that should yield different results from one interpretation to the next. I'm very skeptical of that. — noAxioms

6:50 Deutsch: Yes, so if that happened that would refute the Everettian interpretation or, as I would say, it would refute quantum theory. — Are There Many Worlds? David Deutsch in conversation with Markus Arndt

This seems to suggest that it is quantum theory that would be falsified given, well, apparently some sort of confirmation of 'consciousness causes collapse', except that in itself is another quantum interpretation (the Wigner interpretation) which was abandoned by Wigner himself due to it leading to solipsism, not because it in any way refuted quantum theory.

In my opinion, Deutsch is answering what seems to be a naive comment, not really describing a test result that differ empirically from one interpretation to the next. Consciousness causing collapse is not an empirical thing.

Essentially, Deutsch's proposed experiment would implement the Wigner's Friend thought experiment. — Andrew M

OK. Do any of the interpretations predict a different outcome of this experiment than the others? It's pretty straight-forward. The friend comes out and only remembers classical stuff. The experience of being in superposition relative to the box exterior is in no way different than the same thing without the box. You can no more get interference of the friend than you can get the dead and live cat to interfere with each other. Perhaps this is not the case with the quantum AI, in which case is kind of isn't the Wigner friend thing exactly.

In Deutsch's proposal, Wigner would be a human-level AI running on a quantum computer, with the friend (also a human-level AI) and the measured qubit being internal and isolated subsystems of Wigner.

By conducting an interference experiment on the joint friend/qubit subsystem, the Wigner AI would be able to determine whether physical collapse happened or not.

OK. I remain skeptical of any claim that this kind of thing can be measured without interpretation-specific assumptions.

- - - - -

Wayfarer, I do see your conundrum and cannot satisfactorily resolve it.

But the point is, the object has no specific location until measured. — Wayfarer

Interpretation dependent, but true in any local interpretation.

You can't say 'the photon caused the measurement' because this assumes that it has some definite existence in some unknown location prior to being measured.

The measurement became entangled with the emitting event? That sort of makes it sound like the measurement caused the emitting event. I have no problem with this given a relational view where ontology sort of works temporally backwards. A measurement causes the existence of something in the past (the moon say). Until it is meansured by you, it doesn't exist to you even if it exists relative to something else. Ontology as a relation.
MWI doesn't in any way make existence dependent on measurement as far as I know. There are worlds with the moon and worlds without, and you just happen to be coherent with one with a moon

There is no 'something' hiding in an unknown location until measured

That again seems the same as it existing, unmeasured. If so, not sure what changes upon the measurement.

- the measurement makes it 'something'.

So Rovelli would say I think. Copenhagen might say that measurement makes us aware of it, depending if the interpretation is taken as epistemological or metaphysical. There are forms of both, and I don't know how the latter would frame this.

That is why, indeed, 'exists' and 'real' have to be put in scare quotes in this context.

Agree with the quotes. Do the words mean different things? The problems you point out is a good part of why I am skeptcal of realism.

Are you simply referring to the idea or criticism that many theists (especially christian/moslem fundamentals,) don't care about sustaining/protecting Earthly resources, as their focus is on their faith in their promised existence after death? — universeness

No, that statement was not a criticism. Just noticing that they don’t really seem to be vocal about this subject. They do indeed not seem to address the long term issues, but nobody else does either, so religion is hardly taking a different stance here.

I try not to make judgements based on nationality. When things get tight, I don't think Russians act so differently from Americans, Germans, Englishmen, Africans or any other nationality.

Nope. We’d pull the plug as well when there’s no longer any profit in keeping it running.

I suspect that if you die

They’ll hopefully let me hasten the process rather than the prolonged torture that so many people go through, all under the heading of ‘do no harm’. Pretty ironic. At least freezing isn’t torture.

Oh, I get what you meant now, you mean, rather than trying to terraform Mars, its wiser to transform humans so they can live in the current Martian environment. — universeness

Something more like that, yes. Mars sucks. Only 1% the pressure of Earth and no water. Hard to engineer something that can thrive in such a hostile environment, especially a high-metabolism being such as ourselves. Can you have intelligence without that? I think so, but it would be quite slow, sort of like ents.

I appreciate your 'worries' about the situation and I think they are well founded and should not be underestimated but I do try to counter balance such with what humans do, when the possibility of their own extinction gets closer and closer.

Most of them have your positive attitude and assume somebody will fix it.

We will spread out, yes but not 'in conquest,' or as a pernicious force/presence. — universeness

I never meant it that way. I just mean colonize the galaxy, not conquer it.

Perhaps even a benevolent united federation of planets.

I think a federation of planets would resist a mommy even more than a single one.

Nonsense sir! no current first world country is socialist.

OK, we have different definitions. We feed the old and the poor. They used to starve before WWII.

They are all capitalist as they are all currency driven, free market economies.

OK, by socialist you want an economy devoid of currency. The problem there is the lack of the mommy. If some country does that, it cannot compete with the capitalist competitors in other countries. Balanced trade would falter, especially if there’s no currency to back that trade. A mommy would fix that since effectively the whole world would work the way you envision, but there’d still be little incentive to finding more efficient ways to produce things. This is a problem that needs solving. How do you salvage the advantages of the capitalism without the drawbacks? What do you do with the people reluctant to work? I mean, money is owed-labor in the end, and you’re throwing that away.
Socialism is more fragile, less resistant to shortages than other methods. It comes up often in war hospitals where there’s demand for some drug or treatment exceeds supply. Socialism says everybody in need gets some, but not enough. Better to give on a ROI basis: Give it to who gets the most benefit for the amount given, not to those most in need of it. Cut your losses. In this way, the most serious cases are lost, but in the ‘share all the world’ method, even more die and the survivors are worse off.

True democratic socialism has never been successfully established anywhere on the planet ..... yet.

Democratic? Most places are republics. What’s your definition of something being democratic?

A resourced based global economy, would be the most significant human change to the way we live, since we switched from nomadic hunter-gatherers to fixed communities supported by trade and agriculture.

If it’s self-sustaining without fossil fuel, then great! It’s a city. Where do the rednecks live?

It isn’t ever going to happen — noAxioms
The 'church' needs to drop god — universeness

That even more is never going to happen. Kind of kills the whole point of rule by unverifiable promises.

Or, at least, every church/chapel/temple/cathedral/mosque etc should also function as secular homeless shelters, substance abuse support centers, medical support centers, etc, etc.

The local hospital by me was run by the church, hence prohibited some procedures that they decided made you immoral. Have to go somewhere further away if you wanted those options.

Crops grown indoors depend on artificial light. Note that sunlight can be exploited for natural lighting or self-sufficient generation of electricity through photovoltaic solar panels.

Using a solar panels to create light for crops is far less efficient than just putting the plants in the light. I’m all for solar panels over parking lots and buildings and such, but the solar farms are mostly covering land that could be used to grow something.

While renewable and alternative sources of energycan promote the ecological soundness of vertical farming, the practice can still have a considerable carbon footprint if it still depends on the use of fossil fuels. There is a need to improve first renewable and alternative energy technologies to guarantee environmental sustainability and energy efficiency of vertical farming."

That’s the rub. Every watt of renewable energy consumed (and it sounds like VF uses more than regular farming) is one less renewable watt that can be used elsewhere. The excess must be taken up by the fossil fuels. It’s why I’ve not bought into the solar farm thing. If I did, that’s just so much green electricity that somebody else can’t have. The net benefit of switching is zero unless your money actually buys more capacity such as panels on your own house.

IDid you deliberately misspell Orca as these imaginings are alien Orca which you are calling OrKa? — universeness

Well it needs a different name, but one with the right vibes.

Half the stuff I read has obviously never seen an editor and cites no credible sources.
— noAxioms
But that's just half the stuff YOU have read, which is what percent of available 'stuff'?

It’s a good percentage of the random articles linked by sites like yahoo news or google news. Yes, there’s better written stuff out there, but almost impossible to find if you’re not explicitly searching for it. The algorithms for what gets put on the front pages of the site is not particularly based on factual content at all. This was a big change compared to only 20 years ago.

How much merit do you give to 'big brother is watching you?'

Quite a bit. I just served 2 months on a grand jury and got a taste of the sort of evidence they collect automatically. They knew where these baddies were by phone tracking and car-license monitoring on the main roads. All the big tech companies (apple, google, microsoft, etc) are quite up front now that they collect data on everything you do on your devices. It gets pretty obvious when new ads appear obviously based on recent browsing history.

I can only invoke the cosmic calendar again and say we have only been at this for a few seconds on the cosmic calendar scale. Give us a f****** chance mate!

That’s kind of evidence that it’s also not going to last long. Make your mark before you’re gone. Make something that can last. That’s as good a purpose as I can think of.

It would have been fun to have been part of that discussion.

We thought it got silly sometimes, but couldn’t exactly pinpoint where.

He finally asks 'how does Tom get from A to B and his second answer is 'through the wormhole,' he then says 'you might not believe that but, that's ok, we can debate that later.'. — universeness

I did watch and admittedly don’t know the terminology enough to follow what is being suggested.

I also didn't know IQ could be negative. — Agent Smith

By symmetry, a negative IQ occurs about as often as one over 200. They’re out there. My youngest is at about 67 or so, low, but not newsworthy low. My other kids are over 100.

Any ideas whether intelligence genes have been identified?

They’ve found at least 22.

We could breed geniuses then, eh? I wonder of normal folks would approve - it gives me Nazi eugenics vibes.

Bad vibes presumably. I’m all for the posthumans, but not so much for mingling with them. Current gilded-age morals forbids most of the solutions to problems discussed in this topic.

Theism doesn’t waste resources that others will have to pay for with their lives. — noAxioms
Not sure what you mean by this? Example? — universeness

A limited resource constrains the usage to which it can be put. Running power for no likely gain will drain that resource sooner than if it wasn’t being used that way. More people can live on the excess.
Larry Niven got into a post-scarcity economy description in his book Rainbow Mars. Every time a capital project was proposed, it always came with a calculation of how many lives it would cost. Anyway, to my knowledge, theism doesn’t encourage this sort of delay to meeting your maker.

Several hundred people have already paid to have their bodies cryogenically preserved in three existing facilities in the US and Russia, and there are as many as 1,250 on waiting lists.

Oh like the Russians are going to honor those contracts when things get tight. But yea, they’ll take your money.
Waiting list? What, like I’m dying now but a spot is opening up next March? Hope you haven’t expired too much while you’re waiting.

I have already stated that I think that 'all of the above will be attempted.' I am hardly therefore 'an enemy' of any idea for how best to develop and explore space.

Didn’t talk about being an enemy of an idea. I said enemy of an environment. Better to make friends with it, work with it, not against it.

It's a lot easier to control frogs that to control human population

No, they’re both controlled pretty much by the same method. It’s not like airplanes flew over and sprayed for them.

We can just dispose of a currently existing excess human population.

That’s what the robots say! Another typo? If we don’t do something about it, the frog method will get employed (no, not make grease spots on all the intersections).

Whilst we also try to educate people into understanding their current local circumstances and the folly of having children they and the government they live under are unable to, or are too corrupt to, or are to much under the influence of international interference to, support.

Doesn’t stop them. Nobody likes getting told what to do, especially if its for the benefit of somebody else. Also, there will be those who comply and those who defy and have a bunch of kids. Guess which group gets naturally selected out? We’d be breeding humanity for wanting larger families.

so it’s humanity’s survival that’s the goal, not the taking-over of the galaxy. — noAxioms
Both goals handshake imo,

OK, I think they’re fairly exclusive imo. We’re not fit to do it, but what we can create can be fit to do it. Best odds of survival of humans is to not kill each other at home. It’s worked great for many species, but yea, not so much the dinosaurs.

I don't approve of the aggressive sounding, 'taking over of the galaxy' imagery you invoke.

Pretty much got that from you with your talk of humanity having a purpose of making some kind significant impact on the universe, like it served the purpose of the universe or something. Can’t make any more than a scratch if we don’t cause something to spread out, to outlast the death of our planet which is already about 80% of the way there.

No metal? Please explain!

Civilization collapses. We still have metal, but it’s old stuff from before. Nobody knows anymore how to get more since it takes tech to get at it. We’ve mined all the easy stuff. It becomes a chicken/egg problem. Takes metal to get to get to the metal. Fear not. The salvaged metals will last centuries. The longer it lasts, the less we’ll remember how to get more when most of it has corroded away.’

I am a socialist

So is every first world government on the planet, just some more than others. Anyway, yea, I definitely get socialist vibes from you. The Scandinavian countries seem to do it best. Harder to be rich there.

who no longer sees value in party politics.

It does serve a purpose, but isn’t implemented well anywhere. I mean over-the-table bribery as policy? That’s sanctioned corruption. Nobody blinks, and those getting the bribes are hardly motivated to vote that crap out of the law.

I currently support notions of global unity

That’s the mommy I talked about. We’re not good at all about implementing something like that, but I agree, it’s absolutely needed.

Venus project:

Nice pipe dream, but no numbers. They say no servitude, but it’s all people shown doing the work, and they don’t show where the stuff comes from. No wind farms or other renewable energy apparent.

I am not suggesting we are more intelligent than the ancients or that we will be 'more intelligent' in the future — universeness

We were being selected for it for a while, even if it’s on the decline now. If it becomes ethical to make modifications, we can reverse that trend, so I’m willing to suggest a future upswing. The singularity might render the need moot.

So, our knowledge increases as a collective. This is another example of what is emergent in humans.

and in anything ‘posthuman’.

Yeah but it's an 'end times' curio. Those who are not 'raptured,' perish!

They don’t though. Things just get tough from there on according to the story. You have a second chance of sorts, but the path is narrower than it was before the rapture. Tread it and you will be severely persecuted. So I was taught anyway. No, I was not raised by rapturists, but we covered this sort of stuff in school.
My opinion was that the description of heaven sounded horrible. Great for 5 minutes, but it quickly devolves into slow torture, kind of like a heroin addiction.

We don't need to kill popes.

No, but the church needs to get on the side of humanity instead of the side of the church. It isn’t ever going to happen.

How about genetically modified foods?
How about vertical farming?

These are all grown/harvested/distributed with fossil fuels today. They’re not a substitute for digging limited carbon out of the ground.

It not like no-one is talking about it. For example, five-ways-we-can-feed-the-world-in-2050

Not talking about 2050. I’m talking about when there’s no more to dig out of the ground, coupled with what the environment will look like with that much greenhouse gasses added to what’s already there.

his continued reference to the concept of 'transportation through a wormhole' with entangled micro black holes at either end and his statement that he thinks wormholes may well be physical realities. — universeness

Negative mass and tachyons are also valid under Einstein’s equations. Much of this wormhole stuff requires such exotic matter which theoretically is allowed, but isn’t open to actually existing. Really, a micro black hole? How are messages going to be sent fast utilizing a tiny bit of spacetime that is infinitely far into the coordinate future? Maybe I have to actually find time to watch the thing.

I think that we would be ecstatic initially, but eventually, we would probably be somewhat disappointed that we came so far to find only the equivalent of killer whales.

Only? That is that fantastic chance you were positing. We actually meed something where it is questionable which is more intelligent. Hardly disappointing. They’re probably as disappointed in us not being like them as we are of them not being like us.

Yes, I hope we fully respect the alien killer whales and we leave their habitat and environment alone. Perhaps however, we may still be able to start a colony there.

A colony where we’re not allowed to touch the environment? Sounds like a zoo for the Orka amusement.

We probably currently live in 'the best of times,' at least so far, when it comes to being able to combat fake news.

I’m old enough to remember professional news reporting. It died when people stopped paying for it. No, those best of times are gone for now. Half the stuff I read has obviously never seen an editor and cites no credible sources.

That's almost technophobic sir!

I am in a way. My son has one of those smart speakers and it totally gives me the creeps to know everything in the room is being recorded in some google database somewhere. For a long time I was in the biz of selling places like google things on which to store all that data.

I suggested such as a 'collectivised' or 'totality' of intent and purpose of the human race.

I don’t see any collective purpose exhibited by the human race. There’s a list of nice-to-haves, but no actual striving for some collective purpose. Not even something as simple as ‘don’t go extinct’. But then, I don’t see any other species with a purpose like that either. We’re not worse than the sponges.

Interesting, but how did this, I assume, 'electronic manifestation' demonstrate it's omniscience?

No electronics. It knows everything simply by always being right, by chance.

Could you ask it questions?

It wouldn’t hear you, but it wouldn’t need to. Yes, you could ask it anything and it would convey the correct answer in whatever method it could do that, perhaps by writing in your native language.
It got weird to delve into what something like that would look like. It wouldn’t need a central nervous system for one thing. It was a very old topic, probably on the old PF before it died and everybody created this site to replace it. It was born of exploring how best to actually implement a dualistic mind using the physics of this universe. We came to the conclusion that this creature must exist in some world out there, but not in this one, so not existing by any empirical definition of the word.

Can x make y more intelligent than x? It seems possible — Agent Smith

That's the whole idea of the singularity, that x can make its successor.

base matter (inanimate) has an IQ of 0

No. IQ is a bell curve centered on 100, but can have a negative IQ, which is still vastly more intelligent than inanimate matter.

but humans, on average, have an IQ of 130

On average, humans have 100 IQ by definition.
Humans emerging from matter isn't really the matter 'making' us, but rather a natural process, sort of things making themselves. We can short-circuit that natural process and actually modify our genes to produce more intelligent offspring. That would definitely by a case of x 'making' y where y scores better. Right now the human race is not being selected for intelligence, so it's probably trending downward.

I think [Cryonics] probably is a forlorn hope, just like theism — universeness

Theism doesn’t waste resources that others will have to pay for with their lives. On the other hand, plenty of lives are lost to theism, so go figure.
I’m trying to concentrate on the emergence, what humanity might become or where it might go. Preserving people seconds from death doesn’t seem to play a significant role in that.

The global population is made up of individuals! Anything that happens to an individual has the potential to affect everyone.

No doubt. A group of people split into life-expectancies of 70 and 200 won’t cause any trouble at all.

The subject of this topic is what is 'emergent' in humans. I am interested in what is ultimately emergent in all humans, yes, or future humanity as it might manifest collectively or as a totality

Nice summary, thanks. I have suggested that what is emergent in humans will not be human. To resist this is to waste our potential.

I say, 'YES WE CAN and YES WE WILL!!!'

I say that too, but I also say it’s a lot easier to fit the creature to the environment than the other way around. Be its friend instead of making yourself its enemy.

I say that in the same way natural selection evidence suggests that reproduction, is a survival of a species imperative. — universeness

But not out-of-control reproduction. When I moved to this new place, there was a frog plague going on. Frogs everywhere. What good did it do them? Some months later they were all gone, populations back to (or even somewhat beneath) normal levels and it was easier to stop at the intersections again.

If there are more of us existing in many extraterrestial places, the we are less dependent on the Earths' continued existence for survival. Seems like common sense to me.

Ah, so it’s humanity’s survival that’s the goal, not the taking-over of the galaxy. That might be better served with the 95% population reduction and learning to get along with each other. If we can get through the collapse without extinction, it may actually sustain itself going forward. Hence my vision of the world in 1000 years in some prior post. Imagine a world with people but almost no metal.

when we have such vile economic systems as capitalism and vile political systems such as autocracy or plutocracy as our mainstream operating system for 'how humans are allowed to live.'

Got suggestions? I’m actually quite interested in ideas for a stable government system that doesn’t depend on the whole system of the poor being slaves to the rich. I don’t much know what I’m talking about here, so my views might be quite naive.

It's not 'more intelligence' as it's either folks who don't demonstrate much intelligence, learning how to demonstrate more intelligence or it's intelligent people gaining a higher level of intelligence via more time to study!

Studying doesn’t increase intelligence. But agree with the rest.

lol: Yeah, there are many autocrats/plutocrats/totalitarians/theists who believe in BS like the rapture, etc, etc who would support your trimming of the population down to 6%.

First of all, the theists have a lot to do with encouraging overpopulation. The Catholics consider it a sin to not breed like bunnies. Their moral code forbids the very steps that would save humanity, perhaps as a way to eventually force God’s hand, like he’s got to step in before the crash. As for the rapture, I think most of its adherents would suggests a figure like 1-2% disappearing, not 94%.

I think it's more important to create equitable social/economic/political ways to live

Not while the pope lives...

This planet COULD sustain 8 billion of us

Sorry, but no. If we’re not putting back what we dig out of the ground, then it is mathematically unsustainable. Playing nice with each other (sharing all the world – Lennon) is probably the worst strategy because everybody dies simultaneously, or you didn’t do it right.
Work out what needs to be done without the non-renewables, then do the calculation of how many can be sustained. I know, you label me a doomster, but you seem to have no answer to this simple thing except hope that the magic will continue and fuel from the ground never ends.

I think it's likely that 'all of the above' style attempts will be made before we find out which methods of space exploration and development are the most successful based on whatever tech levels we have achieved at the time.

How to do an interstellar colony: Build a smart ship that can do everything. Bring DNA with you. Take 100000 years to get somewhere, perhaps refueling if it doesn’t seem workable at close inspection. If it passes, introduce simple life, and then direct it just like at the teleological theorist posit. In perhaps less time than it took to get there, you have your life on the new place. Some of them might even be intelligent, especially if the advances are being directed. Un-natural selection. Point is, it’s a lot cheaper by many orders of magnitude than ferrying a small number of colonists from Earth and then telling them the won’t be a hospitable environment for them yet, or maybe ever except in this little box it made for them, which they’re used to since being stuck on a ship is all they know.

We can't change the laws of physics but we can learn more physics and start to know, as you do, that there are different laws of physics for the macro and the sub atomic. Classical physics laws and quantum physics laws, and the search for the physics that encompassed them both, is still for the seekers.

Classical physics is a function of the more fundamental quantum physics. They’re not separate branches of some yet to be discovered encompassing thing. QM encompasses classical physics just like relativity encompasses Newtonian mechanics.

I certainly would not be so short sighted as to jettison, in anyway, shape of form the very exciting and wonderful areas of VR, AR and holotech. A current mobile smartphone would not even deserve the dismissive term 'fancy telephone,' as it is obviously a palmtop/handheld computer and the connection to the technology called 'phone,' should have been dropped years ago.

No argument except that it has little to do with the topic. Yea, we have an information device that’s always with us. Nobody say how that would revolutionize everything, including revolutionizing the whole concept of truth.

Firstly, it seems I have the spelling of his first name wrong and its Leonard Susskind. — universeness

Well there you go. Had you spelled it right, I would have accepted his reported assertions.

He is certainly no quack and is held in very high regard indeed, within the Physics community.

So I suspect, so I’m actually going with you not actually interpreting his comments the way they were meant.

1. Ads/cft (anti-de sitter / conformal field theory)
Gravity is the hydrodynamics of entanglement.

CFT is Penrose’s thing, no? No wait, that’s conformal cyclic cosmology.=

4. Messages can be securely transmitted from the vicinity of one object to the vicinity of the other, without leaving any trace in the laboratory space between. Teleportation through the wormhole, 'so to speak.' This is not possible classically.

This is done today, but it’s not anything faster than light. Points 2 and 3 seem to just be suggested areas of exploration.
Perhaps this is what you meant by “he proposes that manipulation of quantum entanglement may indeed mean we can observe and measure what going on at large distances without any 'signal travelling involved”.
OK, this may be some weird kind of security thing, but not a faster-than-light claim. It doesn’t look like a claim of ‘do something to one end and the other entangled end is ‘immediately’ affected’ that I took it for. I’ll withdrawn the declaration of ‘bunk’ for now. But really, a security feature isn’t exactly going to make interstellar exploration more possible. There’s no reason for the communications to not be open.

He then goes on to exemplify 4, in a 'simple quantum teleportability' thought experiment, using an Alice and Bob type scenario involving qbits. As this developed, and due to stuff he states later on in the lecture, I began to think that, he was suggesting that superluminal communication, may not be impossible.

OK, that’s the part I balk at. Got a time stamp where he goes into that? Sorry, but an hour is a lot to me right now.

Spacefarers could meet, who have similar tech levels. — universeness

Not buying it. Utterly improbable odds.

Carl Sagan stated often that in that case, there would be no Star Wars, as there would be no competition.

Star wars happen between two worlds both populated by us. That puts us both more or less at the same tech level. Another reason not to branch out to new worlds until you breed a less war-like creature to populate it.

What are the chances?

We’ve been technological for perhaps 3 centuries out of 1.5e8 centuries, so the odds are something on the order of a 1 in 7-8 digit number. Maybe 1 in 5-6 digits to find something to which you can communicate.
Intelligence has a marker and there’s only two species on earth that has it. The marker is menopause, an adaptation that only benefits intelligent races. The other species is the killer whale. Why don’t we try to communicate with them? Odds are they’re the most intelligent non-human thing out there. So suppose we get to the alien world and find the equivalent of killer whales. We have our intelligent ET, but what would we do about it? Hard to talk. They’re not building space ships anytime soon. Are they to be afforded the same moral code as any intelligent species encountered?

Probably something similar to the chances of any sentient life forming anywhere in the universe.

Depending on your assumptions, the chances of that one is 1. The long-odds thing was meeting one at an equivalent level of development. It wouldn’t be clear who would win in a conflict.
The odds being 1, what role should humanity play that we can’t just leave to all those other guys on similar paths? Why does it have to be us? You’re the one positing the big purpose the universe has for us.

But we know not to accept such justifications

I did at the time. Only in hindsight was it made clear, and then only because the news is supposedly free. What will the Russians tell their people if they have to withdraw, or if they annex this country that did nothing to them? There’s a lot more media control there, but the people can still read news from other countries. I’m from the USA and find one of the best ways to get actual news is to consult something foreign like the BBC. Every supposedly legitimate domestic news source seems to attempt to spin each story one way or the other.

Hopefully more and more of we will get better and better at not accepting fake news in the future.

It’s getting far worse actually, mostly due to how people get their news today, which is by popularity picks by google or facebook or something. They push the stories that gather more clicks and not the ones that actually tell it like it is. Really, the social media thing has done more damage to general knowledge than anything I know. It isn’t just natural selection that’s making us dumber.
I don’t yet have a mobile phone. It’s coming, but dang, the things are pure evil.

No right answer to know, surely suggests an invalid or currently unanswerable question or a question that can only be answered via unscientific conjecture, but so what?

First of all, conjecture isn’t an answer, it’s just a guess. If there’s no answer to know, then the omni thing must simply say that: I can’t say what the weather will be 6 months hence, despite my omnipotence. That’s the truth, it’s right, and the people asking are simply wrong to assume that there must be (however unknowable by science) exactly one answer that’s actually correct. It isn’t a requirement of the omniscient entity to know the right answer when there isn’t one.

If it's just my opinion, then I will say so. You do the same, yes?

I try to frame my opinions differently than assertions, but I sometimes come across wrong.

My conclusion is the same as yours, that no omniscient exists.

Of course not, but besides the point. Is the positing of one even consistent? I don’t see why not. I don’t see a contradiction in the ‘no answer’ answer above.

I have merely further stated that if such terms have any use at all, it is a use of no more value than me being determined to win the 100 meters at the Olympics. I can at best asymptotically aspire to such and by doing so I might improve my fitness level but I will never reach that goal.

Didn’t you posit that all people are striving for this known unreachable goal? I didn’t agree with that. Sure, they maybe take steps to swim faster, but never with the goal of being the best really being a factor. Yes, they can aspire to it, but most probably don’t.

A flippant steelmanning if you like.

Had to look that one up. First I’ve heard it.

The tech that the posited omnigod has, is manifest as god functionality, yes.

Don’t understand. Why have a measuring device if the measurement is known before the measuring is done?
I had done a study on how creatures would have evolved in the world of luck where all quantum measurements occur by pure chance in the most beneficial way to the measurer. It evolved the sort of omni-thing you speak of. It knows everything, and thus also nothing since it doesn’t need to actually know anything. It doesn’t need eyes to find food because food is always right where it reaches every time. Eyes provide information, and this thing already has it all, so it doesn’t need more. I see similarities with that and what I’m describing based on your descriptions (if that makes any sense).

I think we should ... focus on who we are as a species and what we want for our future,

That’s what I’ve been saying that humans are particularly bad at. They focus on ‘my’ future, but little beyond that.
I mentioned finding a better political system, and one of the problems is the short term limits which tend to discourage efforts that reap benefits at a time beyond the term of the official. The current system all but destroys any long-term efforts concerning ‘our future’.

I think the phrase 'granting wishes' in the context you use it, is poorly chosen mockery of the (perhaps forlorn) hopes of currently live people, who face and have to come to terms with, their own death. — universeness

The context of the ‘granting wishes’ phrase is the Cryonic one, not extending a normal life for a human. And in either case, one will be forced to come to terms with one’s own death.

I see many many advantages to vastly increased lifespan and robustness for living humans.

Well I see plenty for the individual of course, but I thought the subject of this topic wasn’t the individual. We’d have to eliminate aging, meaning that we’d stay young and fit for a long time. Last thing we need is 80% of the population in some kind of retired state. If we do that, we have to do it to everybody, and that’s kind of a problem with a large population. This would be a disadvantage for the species. There’s a reason evolution invented aging.

I agree that there would be various affects on human population, but if we can create valid extraterrestial habitats[/quote]The extraterrestrial habitats are jails at best. If you want to put people in a box, it’s easier to do it here. If you want people to actually live on another world, they need to be evolved for that world. They cannot be human. There’s no planet B.
https://aeon.co/essays/we-will-never-be-able-to-live-on-another-planet-heres-why
If that doesn’t take you to the article, copy and paste it. I don’t know what’s messed up with links on this site.

then we can afford a population much bigger than the current 8 billion on Earth.

You say that like it’s some kind of benefit that a bigger number is better.

People living for 500 years may offer a level of accumulated knowledge within some individuals that surpasses all past levels of 'genius.'

Longer life doesn’t make one smarter. A little more wise maybe, but not more intelligent. You can breed for intelligence if you like (something that is currently being naturally de-selected), but again, by your analogy of re-inventing the wheel, why do we need more intelligence when the tool already exists?

I think that such would indeed help prevent environmental catastrophe

The 8 billion and growing count seems pretty precisely what is causing the environmental catastrophe. If there is some kind of purpose served by maxing out the number of humans that exist, trimming the population permanently down to around 6% of what is is today would be a great start. Less existing at once, but far more in the longer run.

and provide advanced tech to help us become an extraterrestial/interstellar species.

Or better, to help the tech become that interstellar species. If you want humanity to make its mark on the universe, that is how to go about it.

Yeah, you are assuming that the 'classical laws of physics,' will dictate what can and cannot be achieved in any future timescale.

Yea, what are humans good for if we can’t change the laws of physics? So put that on your list and jettison the VR thing which is just a fancy telephone.

The lecture I posted from Lennard Susskind earlier, has a section where he proposes that manipulation of quantum entanglement may indeed mean we can observe and measure what going on at large distances without any 'signal travelling,' involved.

Either you’re misreading his words, or he’s a quack. If his assertions actually said that and had merit, it would be huge news in the physics world. All of Einstein’s theories would get falsified and we’d have to reinvent a new theory to replace it. Time travel would become possible since I could observe something that hasn’t yet happened.
Sorry for all that, but perhaps a quote that leads you to this conclusion would help. It was a long vid to attempt to hunt down something I don’t think he said. If I had a quote, I could help interpret it since I’m not a total noob at this. I spend more time on the physics forums, and am a moderator at one of them.

If we meet alien lifeforms in the future that have the same or more or even a little less ability than we do

That’s like you and me picking a random number from one to 10 million, and both of us guessing the same one. Odds are they’re either as developed as lichen, or we are the lichen in comparison to them. Neither might recognize the other as life, or at least not as something one might attempt to communicate with. Do we share our technology with the squirrels? The squirrels have picked a number insanely close to ours, but not the same number.

I remain hopeful that the 'military advantage,' you highlight may well still be sought but will only ever be used in defence and NOT EVER to attack.

See? Time to first change who we are before we spread out and just make enemies of our colonies. Most every attack is justified as defense to its own people. Ever read up on what the Russians are telling its citizens about the Ukraine thing? Remember Bush and Iraq’s WMDs? “We’re doing this for defense”, not just to get back at somebody who insulted his daddy.

I don't value your example, as we can predict the weather in 6 months based on such as, last years data, combined with projecting any current weather patterns and climate change projections. — universeness

Sure, the farmer’s almanac does that, but it doesn’t say exactly where the rain will be falling at a specific time. Those specifics are what I’m talking about. Better tech has nothing to do with this.
If physics is perfectly deterministic and unitary, then yes, the omnipotent entity would know exactly that. But physics might not be all those things, in which case there’s no right answer to know.

But that's a foundational claim of theism!

Not always, but yes. Theism isn’t based on logic or observation. They’re up front about that. Making impossible claims isn’t something that bothers them, and the people consuming the story have little interest in the self-consistency of the story.

You are trying to contemplate an omniscient god with your feeble human intellect.

How so? A thing that knows all answers vs a question that literally has no right answer. Even a feeble intellect can detect something wrong with that.

An omniscient has all possible tech or else it is not omniscient.

Omnigod does not need a barometer, as it already owns all data/information in the universe, past, present and future.

The two above statements seem to contradict each other. You apparently suggest that a god has a closet full of completely unneeded stuff. He’s a hoarder, unable to keep the place neat.

All possible tech already exists as part of omnigod

So it doesn’t have a useless barometer in it’s closet, but rather has a useless barometer as part of itself, sort of like having eyes despite never using them. A human apparently strives to achieve a state where eyes and other senses are useless.

Are you sure the TS hasn't taken place? One possible reason why we haven't met ET is because they don't want to (be discovered). — Agent Smith

Maybe the TS has already happened and we are being kept from discovering ETI by our TS-saturated satellites, telescopes & space probes? Maybe the TS covertly studies both ETI and us? :yikes: — 180 Proof

What is ETI? That means extraterrestrial intelligence to me, but some AI built by us isn’t extraterrestrial.
TS isn’t a thing that saturates satellites like skynet or something. It’s just a threshold where the machine is more efficient at improving the machine than are its creators. There’s no robot walking around or anything, escaping somewhere for instance. Any machine that meets the qualification above will be very much leveraged to give its creators a competitive advantage over the places with the human developers.

Some of us wish to go extinct mon ami! — Agent Smith

An individual cannot meaningfully go extinct. It’s only a term that applies to a species.

I accept that particular humans can excel in areas that they have studied for years in, and they can become 'better than most or even all, in THAT field, at THAT time.' I was probably better than Einstein at many many things. — universeness

Einstein wasn’t particularly well-studies. He had trouble with most of his schooling, which perhaps is a critique on the way education is taught. Einstein was unusually open minded, willing to question any intuitive bias.
Being well-educated or well-rounded in skills has little to do with passing an IQ test, which for the most part doesn’t test how educated you are.

Cryonics:

The wish to die only when YOU want to, is very strong in most humans, including myself. — universeness

Agree, but granting wishes to individuals has little to do with benefit to humanity except perhaps in a negative way. People living for 500 years isn’t going to prevent environmental catastrophe or get any kind of expansion into the galaxy happening.

I just think that there is very little evidence that whatever is stored in your brain, is preserved via cryogenic freezing.

Since they’ve never done it, there is also no evidnce that the information is lost. I think they’ve done it to other things. Amphibians are a natural at it and I’ve heard of some things (dinosaur almost?) getting revived briefly after a really long sleep. That story might be myth. Can’t find it now.

Well , If I wonder if there will be 'points of merging,' in the distant future that augments humans into some genetic/cybernetic merge.

Likely actually given we last long enough. Putting human parts in a machine (as opposed to putting machine parts in human) seems inefficient. All this life support to do something probably better done without all the extra overhead.

Holotech may be a great way to project yourself great distances, very quickly, for communication purposes or even as a way of investigating planets without travelling there yourself, physically.

We have that now. It’s called a TV and phone. Neither works faster than light, so no VR is going to let you walk around and control some avatar light-years away. Still, the military does that with drones and such because the distances are not so far. Even doing at the moon would be awkward, as are communications with those long pauses.

What do you mean by 'something less specific?'

You said humanity, in context of something to which a thing has a purpose. The less specific thing would be a collection of agents, humanity being only part of the larger collection, to which the thing has collective purpose.

If we met another alien race and we 'pooled' our science instead of trying to wipe each other out, would that not help all concerned answer all the tough questions we have?

One race would be likely far advanced compared to the other and would have little to learn from the lesser, at least as far as technology is concerned. The lesser race would likely not be ready for ‘all the answers’ at once, and so if it is deemed reasonable/safe to bring this lesser race up to speed, it would probably have to be done quite slowly. Remember the main reason for advanced technological development. It isn’t for exploration or for fantasies about omniscience. It’s about military advantage. You don’t give super-advanced toys to a race like that. That’s part of the transhuman effort: To collectively change who we are so we can survive our own advancement.

If you believe that there are things that can be known then we diverge there.

Cannot be known, and I gave examples. The weather 6 months hence was one.

"There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it, ..... always!”

Well, the Korean thing has to end eventually. The death of somebody with absolute power instigates a struggle to replace him, and one of them eventually won’t know how to hang on to the power.

But why would an omniscient make such an irrational statement about the weather on July 1st 2023? — universeness

Wasn’t an irrational statement. Under several interpretations, it’s entirely true. The future weather is in superposition of all those states. It isn’t measured by us, and under several interpretations, measurement by something not part of the structure isn’t meaningful. So if the definition of omniscience is that the entity must know this unknowable thing, then the only logical inconsistency is the positing of such an entitiy.

An omniscient has all possible tech or else it is not omniscient.

Really? God needs a barometer to measure the pressure? Tech is only to tell you something you don’t know, or do something you can’t do yourself, and the omniscient omnipotent entity doesn’t need any of it.

One would think after being inhumanely treated for so long, their spirit would be crushed — Agent Smith

Not so. Persecution cements faith which otherwise tends to stagnate. The Christians were never stronger in their belief than when they had to hide it from the laws at the time. It kept them unified too.

I consider cryonics a valid act of desperation — universeness

Fine, but the desires of the individual does nothing to help humanity in the way that the transhumanists envision. All it does is drain limited resources for no useful purpose except that of the gullible sot that paid for it.

Personally, I would have more confidence in cryonics than I would in Pascals wager.

That wager begs its conclusion. Pascal didn’t think it through.

I am not sure what you mean by this, unless it's just to confirm that you don't think the cryogenic tech would work

Cryonic tech. The LHC uses cryogenic tech, but has nothing to do with bodies.
I see no purpose in reanimating somebody who was so bad off that he’s 10 seconds from death. With resources diminishing, why insert another body into perpetual artificial life support, especially if the body isn’t even a legal person. If they need another conscious person around, make a baby. Much more useful and way less work.

I think it depends on whether or not VR and AR can grow into something more akin to the type of 'holography' we see depicted on shows like 'star trek.

Again, what goal of humanity is served by the holo-deck? It’s just entertainment, not it being used for the sort of goals you’re describing.

At what point will 'transhuman' efforts result in a new species?

Pretty much by definition, when humans can no longer breed with one. What if we create a species that does not breed the ‘normal’ way? Only test-tube high-tech artificial reproduction. Much of the flower industry already works this way.

Is a human kept alive by a pacemaker, still fully human?

Absolutely, just as much as a human with tooth fillings. By my definition above, I am no longer human, but that’s just me. I used to be. Have proof.

I am currently most attracted to 'asymptotic intent and purpose towards omniscience, with the goal of knowing the workings and purpose of the universe. — universeness

The workings is something of which there is more to learn. As to purpose, that word seems reserved for something serving the intention of some entity, thus serving a purpose to that entity. So say I drop a jar into the sea and some octopus (yes, them again) moves into it as a sort of home. That’s purpose even if the octopus didn’t create it. So in that light, the universe seems to serve the human purpose of providing materials and environment for our existence, but that’s our purpose being served, not that of the universe, which would be akin to the jar requiring to have an octopus live in it.

I also now see free will (if it truly exists) as not gifted from god but as a result of intent and purpose

This came up before but I still don’t have your definition of free will, especially one where it subjectively matters one way or the other.

Can such as the concept of country you are suggesting, be expanded to 'planet'? or solar system or interstellar existence, if such was the spread of humanity in the future.

I think that would be humanity that knows stuff then. Maybe something less specific if there’s more than just humanity doing the collective knowing.

he term asymptotic is important in my suggested human aspirations towards omniscience. — universeness

There are things that cannot be known, so this asymptotic approach cannot be.

I accept that you can use terror to indoctrinate people, especially if you start when they are young, but its a very old tactic that fails in the final analysis.

Worked for the church for a long time, and it works indefinitely in the Korean situation as long as freedom of speech and information is kept in check. The church failed to keep it in check.

If you accept the definition of the term omniscient, then such certainly could do what you suggest it could not.

OK, the omniscient entity can say that it will rain next July 1, and also it will be dry and sunny, and also cloudy and humid, and also reasonably cool, not none of that all at once. But I could also say that, and we’d both be right, and we’d both be entirely unhelpful. More tech isn’t going to help with the answer precisely because the answer above is already correct.

I think there is some contradiction here. I think both of us give high credence to the assertion that god has no existent. Would you agree?

Depends on definitions, but yes. I don’t think the church suggests that God has or needs ‘tech’.

No doubt their will be issue's of human V transhuman, rights, racial status, redundancy etc.

I don’t think they’ll find themselves in each other’s presence much if at all. Putting super-people here on Earth will just cause wars. Putting something different on planet X is a necessity.

I can only hope we do better than we do with issues between black/white, male/female, ability/disability, gender variation etc.

As I said, humanity hasn’t exactly shown its readiness for tolerance of something different. Recent events have shown that such prejudice is always there under a thin layer of civility.

Well, I would probably prefer our science to have reached polymorphic (shapeshifting) tech:

If there’s anything a cephalopod can do, it’s shape shift. Color shift too.

The cognitive singularity: Mind from life (primates, dolphins, etc.) — Agent Smith

That started long before there were mammals.

the TS (the technological singularity) might've already taken place — Agent Smith

You’re using ‘singularity’ in a different way than is meant by these terms. Until machines write better code than people do, the TS hasn’t taken place.

Transhumanism does have currently running science projects. — universeness

The transhumanists are actually on some of the right tracks, but need to address some important roadblocks.
Cryonics is about as useless as mind uploading. Don’t see any benefit to either except immortality where said immortality doesn’t serve any purpose. By current law, and person resulting from such a state has no legal rights.
VR has mild uses, and is already employed. The need for it will drop as autonomy of the controlled thing increases. Said autonomy (your #5) is very useful.
High on the list is post-humanism, for which the gene-therapy is but a step, but humans do not have a good track record of tolerating different species. They won’t in any way like or accept something seen as a replacement, especially if they’re given all the best jobs.

I don't see these as separate premise's to my main premise that 'humans are a way for a system to know how and why it IS, from the inside out.

That wasn’t listed as a premise. Are we starting anew with the ‘proof’ or are we steering away from the subject? What system is doing the knowing here, because I cannot think of a way in which this can work. My country doesn’t know most of what I know for instance, despite me being part of the country. Any yes, a country, unlike say the universe, is arguably something that knows stuff.

I have already stated that I am interested in what percentage credence level, others would assign, to what I am typing in this thread.

OK. I give very low credence to people aspiring to being omniscient, like I can’t think of anybody besides you who might agree to such a thing.

[Theists] ask for high credence levels to be assigned to their claims all the time.

Well, they encourage it with impossibly high stakes with which to multiply the otherwise low probability claims, and of course there’s also the indoctrination since early childhood. I mean, the N Koreans really do believe KJ Un is a god and the west is poised to destroy them at any moment. It’s not that they are low intelligence over there, but rather that they’ve no evidence to contradict that. The purpose of the claims is not to be an explanation or to be an actual best attempt at truth. Neither has the same purpose as science.

Knowing the speed of light in a vacuum to the nth decimal point is 'impossible,' if you make n big enough.

And yet knowing where the next dot will land in a double-slit setup can no better be known 1000 years from now than it can be today. Ditto for the weather next July 1. But then, given certain interpretations of QM, not even an omniscient entity could make either prediction, which is sort of contradiction, no?

The fact that no information is conveyed to us by this (proposedly) existing entity, suggests it does not exist. — universeness

Almost by definition, yes.

what is the point of us learning stuff, if we are merely finding some stuff out that this god already knows.

Already answered that. Because we need to know it as well.

Why would you aspire to creating a wheel, if a wheel already exists? — universeness

No, the question becomes, why are you having to reinvent the wheel?

You asked why we should create one, not why we should invent one. I should invent one because I have no access to (or even knowledge of) the invention made by the guy a month’s walk from here.

why did the existing supernatural not just provide you with a wheel?

If a supernatural entity provided me with all my needs at all times, I wouldn’t need the wheel. For that matter, I wouldn’t need senses, or kidneys, or anything else. I think heaven is supposed to be that sort of torture.

Why do humans have to reinvent tech that god already has? Unless, this god does not exist and therefore has no intent or purpose.

It is fallacious to go from merely ‘unhelpful’ to ‘nonexistent’.

If we are not existing in interstellar space within the next billion years then we deserve to be extinct imo.

Interstellar space is not an environment in which the human animal has evolved to thrive. We’ll need to change into something else to be fit out there. That’s the posthuman thing they talk about in the transhumanist literature. Point is, post-human isn’t human anymore any more than we are still a rodent.

I don't mean that natural evolution ever stops, I just mean that science tech will have a much faster effect and can be fully controlled via intent. Our manipulation of agriculture and domesticated animals is proof of that.

I’m kind of all for it, but for the social issues I brought up at the top of this post. It’s considered immoral by many.

'Human' is a template, do we need to be so precious about it? Are the aesthetics of being human, as important, as having the same intellectual ability/identity and physical functionality of being human?

So if we find a possible wet planet best suited to something like an octopus, and we instill similar/better intellectual ability/identity and physical functionality (they’ve already got most of all that), but still essentially a cephalopod by DNA, you’d be OK with calling it human? It’s a word that indicates capability and not primate lineage at all?

I would welcome increased longevity

Death by age is an adaptation added to certain branches a long time ago due to its benefits. It enabled the very complexity that you’re trying to encourage in these post. Sure you want to take that away? I agree that some extra time would be nice to help increase the productive-to-education time ratio. Humans become adults now almost a decade later than they did not too long ago.

It would depend on the existence of others who were 'like me' or who were willing to 'accept' me for what I had 'become.'

Engineering a new form isn’t done to you. It’s done to a new generation, so the question is, would you accept your kids for what they’ve been engineered into?

I was basing my words on descriptions like:
“… Despite their vast separation, a change induced in one will affect the other.”
That space.com quote is wrong, but typical for a pop article actually. jgill gets it closer. Measurements (in the same way) of each of entangled particles will be found to be correlated when later compared. I’m fine with the wiki * Caltech quotes. Neither suggests that a change to one affects the other.
— universeness

My main point was that I don't think any information travels between the two when a measurement of one or the other is made.

Some non-local interpretations (Bohmian mechanics) suggest such communication.

If Lennard Susskind is correct Quantum entanglement may BE gravity!

That was a long vid. Haven’t the time to look. Does it make predictions? Is there a falsification test for his idea vs the consensus? Is there even a consensus quantum gravity candidate yet?

continue to do so, and take whatever time you wish or need to. — universeness

Taking you up on this. Been too busy last couple days to respond to posts.

Did any of them reach the scientific knowledge we have or created tech which is anywhere near the equal of ours? — universeness

Ah, ‘near the equal’ like there is some sort of single scale by which nothing else measures up. You name all these human things that other species haven’t done, but ignore all the marvels that other species do that humans have not and can not.
Anyway, point taken. We do human some things better than do other things, and we exhibit collective intent to a point. We’ve put a man on the moon for a few hours but that doesn’t make us nearly as fit for those offworld environments as some creatures. Be interesting to explore what would be needed to change that, and what the implications of those changes would be.

The reasons [that question-asking precludes an existing god] are:
1. We ask questions
2. We demonstrate intent and purpose, that can significantly change our surroundings and potentially, the contents of the universe. There is no evidence of god(s) creating anything.

Number 2 doesn’t follow from the first premise, so I take it as (two) additional premises. I’m willing to accept them, but additional premises weaken an argument that the first premise is sufficient. I’d like it better if premise 2b was that there is no evidence of gods. The comment as worded leaves it open that there is an omniscient god that isn’t involved in the creation of anything.

3. We aspire to the omni states, because they do not currently exist.

This is a 4th premise now, and one I don’t accept. We cannot aspire to an impossible state. We ask questions because we’re in present need of information, not because we have some impossible goal.
The converse of the proposal suggests that given the existence of a god that knows everything, we’d have no need of information at all despite the fact that no information is conveyed to us by this existing entity. That’s absurd.

Why would you aspire to creating a wheel, if a wheel already exists?

Because I need a wheel to move my stuff and the existing wheel isn’t accessible to me. The question seems to presume there is no need for two of anything, even to the point of two people both knowing the same fact.

This is an example of where a statement such as 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,' fails.

Well, it depends on one’s definition of ‘exists’. I hold a definition that involves measurement by a specific thing, so indeed, absence of measurement is nonexistence relative to that thing by that definition, but most people use a different definition.

Free will, if it truly exists, is a natural happenstance, it was never given to us and its consequences are emergent.

Free will is another thing with all sorts of definitions. I define it as not being remote-controlled (possessed) by some external entity. An example is a slug that gets some parasite that makes it change color and sit in prominent places and wiggle enticingly, in violation of the will of the slug. It lacks the free will of an unaffected slug which is in charge of its own sluggy destiny. Again, that’s just my definition.

Time for humans to stop scapegoating gods and take full ownership of free will and emerging capability.

Scapegoating the gods has a purpose, but probably not one that serves humanity as a whole.

Human's could exist for many many 'billions' of more years.

Given that our planet will not be fit for multicellular life in about a billion years, where exactly should we do this existing, and how will we still be human if we change enough to be fit for that place? It’s not like star trek where 80% of planets are ‘class M’ meaning we don’t have to burden the wardrobe dept with making space suits today. If we can terraform some other world, what’s stopping us from terraforming Earth back to where it’s an environment where we’re fit?

How long will the theists tolerate the complete absence and silence of their supernatural superhero?

They admittedly seem rather bent on forcing the issue given their public policies. I have to admit extreme cynicism when it comes to religious leaders and pundits. It seems incompatible to hold a top position in organized religion and also hold to the beliefs taught, which means they’re not actually trying to force God’s hand with the dangerous policies.

Monism is a term from philosophy — universeness

I don’t mean the word by the definition you quote. I simply meant not-dualism, no supernatural mind.

What do you mean 'No link provided'? Did you not see the video I posted by Jim Al-Khalili about how quantum physics is employed in the biological world? — universeness

No, I didn’t see any link, but it was pretty easy to search given what you posted. I watched it.

When I clicked on the link you posted, it took me to the OP of this thread??

So it does, but if you copy and paste it into a url bar, it goes to the right place. Is the linking messed up on this site?

A change in one IS immediately experienced by the entangled object

This is not true. Not sure where you’re getting your physics. Again, a message could be sent faster than light if this was true.
The link you gave works. It’s to a page about historical experiments, culminating in a refutation of local realism.
The article doesn’t say anything like a change being experienced by the other, but maybe you’re reading that into a line that I missed.

That prior to observation the particle doesn't exist in any specific place, that its possible properties are described by the wave-function, and that the act of measurement reduces all of the possibilities, except for the one in which it was measured, to zero. — Wayfarer

Don't get the last bit. It would seem that if you measured something's location, it is the location possibility which gets reduced to some much smaller deviation, and the others (momentum say) which are still just probabilities of what will be measured. The first bit talks about 'existing in a specific place' which is counterfactual terminology. Most interpretations do not hold to counterfactual definiteness, which means particles don't have actual positions (and other properties) in the absence of measurement. BM would say a photon exists en-route. Just pointing out the minefield of using terms like 'exists' which are defined differently from one interpretation to the next.
So far this isn't a whole lot different from classical physics. The championship game was played last week, but I don't know the outcome, so I have this function (something akin to a wavefunction) that describes the probabilities in detail. Then I pick up the paper and learn of the winner and of the spread and such, and the function collapses, reducing the possibilities to a much shorter list of unknowns.

So that's how the act of observation is considered causal. Is that not correct?

The measurement changed the wavefunction (relative to to the screen at least), so yea, that was caused by the interaction. Did the measurement change the photon? No, it's more like the photon caused the measurement. I'm trying to see the problem here.
Again, the wavefunction is different from one interpretation to the next. If it's epistemological (Bohm, Copenhagen), then the interaction just changes what we know. I see the dot and now know where it hits where before it would be a guess regardless of how much information I had on the system beforehand. If the wavefunction is metaphysically descriptive (RQM say), then the photon hit that spot on a screen with the dot. Much intuitive language doesn't work beyond that. It gets hard to describe. Maybe the example should be something like Objective Collapse interpretation(s), except I'm not very familiar with them. MWI could consider the wave function to be proscriptive, which means nothing changes upon the measurement, which takes place everywhere. Tegmark put out his mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH) and the draw of MWI to him is probably that it allows (does not demand) a proscriptive treatment of the wave function.

I don't recall reading anything like that about Bohr and Heisenberg's interpretation, it seems more like QBism which I mentioned above.

Don't know much about QBism, but it sounds a bit like all the idealism stops being pulled out. It defines existence in terms of beliefs and such, if I read it right.

Might I suggest that the motive for accepting the MWI interpretation is to avoid the philosophical conundrum of the 'collapse of the wave function'? — Wayfarer

If one is seriously averse to wave function collapse, the list of interpretations on wiki (about 13) has only half of them supporting collapse. Point is, there are others to choose from besides MWI.
Interestingly, the list is sorted by date, and the ones without collapse lean more to the front of the list (older) and it is the more recent ones where collapse prevails. This suggests a trend and growing acceptance of collapse.

to wit 'The observer effect is the phenomenon in which the act of observation alters the behavior of the subject of observation'

OK, this is like a double slit setup with a which-slit detector behaves differently than a setup without one. That's not especially profound. If you get into the act of observing now changes something in the past, that's quite interpretation dependent.

This is due to the ambgious nature of sub-atomic particles, which means that they can exist in multiple states simultaneously.

Again an interpretation dependent statement. Not all interpretations suggest that a thing an exist in multiple states simultaneously. Bohmian mechanics for instance has but one state for anything. It is a hard realist interpretation where stuff is where it is. On the other hand, it necessitates backwards causation where decision not yet made can affect what a particle does now. I personally find that more offensive than collapse.

When an observer measures a particular property of a particle, they are effectively collapsing the wave-function of that particle, causing it to assume a definite state

Causing what to assume a definite state? The particle? Only some interpretations suggest this. With some (original Copenhagen for instance), the wave function is epistemological, describing only what one knows about a system. You take a measurement and your knowledge of the system changes, but the system is not affected by your acquisition of this knowledge.
RQM is another example, where a wave function of system X (Mars, 10 minutes ago) relative to system Y (Earth, now) changes upon some measurement. Say we observe a gamma emission. That changes the wave function of X relative to Y, but only because the new Y (post measurement) is now entangled with a particular outcome of a measurement. The ontology of the state of Mars relative to Y has changed (the gamma emission is now real instead of being in superposition), but nothing on Mars objectively changed, especially since there is no objective state under RQM.

So I guess I need to ask what you mean by an act of observation being considered 'causal'. Do you mean that shining a light on leaf to look at it will affect he leaf? Sure, that's pretty easy and is forward causality. I think you mean something deeper like the Mars example where the past ontology of some state changes relative to some present measurement.

The approach of the MWI is to declare that the so-called wave-function collapse doesn't occur - but at the cost of there being many worlds.

Something you apparently consider a substantial cost. I'm fine with that since I don't hold to the premise that there should be only one world, especially in the absence of evidence supporting that premise. My dismissal of MWI comes from other grounds.

MWI is simple. That might be the lead reason for its acceptance. I've heard critique (in linked things above) that it is simple to the point of emptiness.

Remember, my 'objective truth' candidate is now life that can demonstrate intent and purpose to a minimum level of being able to affect it's environment(planet) (and potentially its interstellar neighbourhood) in the same way we humans can. — universeness

Humans were not the first to do this. A huge extinction event 2.7 BY ago took place upon the emergence of Aerobic Metabolism, wiping out or at least driving into hiding the prevalent anaerobic life at the time. That dwarfed the change that humans so far have had on the planet. It wasn’t particularly intended, but neither is what the humans are doing.

I think [Purposeful life precluding god] does follow. I have already given my reasons. What's the point of asking questions, if god already has all the answers?

Remind me of the reasons. I seem to have missed it, unless the question-asking thing is it.
The reason we ask questions in the face of an omniscient god is that said god seems to not communicate those answers. Be great to have a god that acted like a google search, but we both know there’s no such interface. If there is an omniscient god, it keeps its secrets.

WHY? If god exists, we would not experience such compulsions.

I just don’t agree with this connection. I have no trouble envisioning question-asking in a setup with a god.

Consider yourself excused! I am glad you agree people have purpose! Do you agree that god is not needed to produce such a property of life?

Yes to that.

They advocate for their own extinction as part of their goal of ending all suffering, based on their convoluted moral imperative.

Makes suffering sound like a bad thing. If I could take a pill that removed my suffering, I’d not take it. And as I said, they seem to advocate only the extinction of antinatalism.

Well, perhaps I went too far by referring to destroying the universe. I am happy to restrict their threat to life on Earth.

I don’t think that is within the realm of human capability either, even if we do manage to trim over 80% of the species. Life will continue, being exceptionally difficult to stamp out. I don’t think another Theia event would suffice.

The intent of the people on the bus dictates the direction of the bus and therefore the bus is 'useful,' has a function,' 'SERVES a purpose'. — universeness

Agree to all, but with the implications of being useful/functional to the people. You go from that to “the bus knows itself”.

So yes, the purpose and intent of rabbits is a poor comparison with the intent and purpose of humans.

I think I was asking about the purpose of humanity, as opposed to the purpose of humans/people, something which I’ve acknowledged.

I think the term monism has weaknesses. Priority monism or the concept of existence monism, can be used as arguments in support of god, such as in BS ontological arguments like the Kalam cosmological argument. I am monistic in the sense of the credence level I assign to the existence of, and the search for a t.o.e.

Didn’t understand any of that. Maybe I should say naturalism: The lack of need of supernatural to explain what happens.
.

Logic gates and binary are fully understood and are as 'fundamental' in computing as quarks are in physics. We don't yet know the fundamentals of human consciousness.

Logic gates are not fundamental in the way that quarks are to matter. Gates are made of transistors and other components for instance. I was roughly equating a gate to a neuron, both classical constructs with classical behavior. This seems to be the fundamental of consciousness, despite your assertion otherwise. As I said, the same function can be performed by a different sort of switch with similar results, the China-brain being a sort of thought-experiment on the subject (not to be confused with China-room which is something else and fairly fallacious).

The distinction is that current computers have no self-awareness and do not demonstrate any ability to 'understand.

My opinion is otherwise. Neither statement constitutes evidence one way or another, but one can always choose to never apply the word to something nonhuman. It sparks fear in me if we ever encounter an alien race because of the tendency to refuse to apply human language to anything non-human.

In binary addition, 1+1 is 10. A human and a computer can both do this calculation but only a human 'understands' it.

Plenty of evidence to the contrary, else things like ChatGPT wouldn’t know when to apply the operation. Not all computers add in binary. I had one that didn’t. Not all humans do math in decimal, myself included sometimes. Sometimes I do calculus in analog (kind of like a bird does), which gets results faster by orders of magnitude.

A computer processes 'on' + 'on' as two closed gates representing two 1's in the binary 'units' numerical column and produces an open gate in that column and a closed gate in a representation of the decimal 'two's' column.

A computer has no more awareness of that than you do of a specific nerve firing.

IT IS A BRAINLESS MACHINE!

That it is.

From [url=http://Birds like the European robin have an internal compass which appears to make use of a phenomenon called quantum entanglement. ((Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)) Bird navigation, plant photosynthesis and the human sense of smell all represent ways living things appear to exploit the oddities of quantum physics, scientists are finding.]here[/url] — universeness

This sounds really interesting. No link provided. I found this: cbc.ca/news/science/quantum-weirdness-used-by-plants-animals-1.912061
It’s a pop article written by somebody who sounds like they just learned of quantum stuff an hour ago, so plenty of mistakes. All matter depends on QM physics, so just because quantum stuff is going on doesn’t imply an exploitation of the weirdness. For instance, the photoelectric effect utilized a quantum effect, but a solar cell on say your calculator is essentially a classical device. As said before, both nerves and transistors utilize tunneling, but their function is classical. So what does this article say? Yes, it mentions the tunneling.
“appears to make use of quantum entanglement — a linkage of two or more very small objects so that any change to one is immediately experienced by another”
Entangled particles do no such thing. Information could be sent faster than light if this were true. More detail is needed to see what they’ve actually found in regards to this. There cannot be information gained in entanglement. There’s no way Lloyd (with the credentials listed) would have said it that way, except perhaps condescending to a very naive audience.
“Physics experiments show that certain entangled electrons are also very sensitive to the orientation of weak magnetic fields, and the birds' behaviour suggests they are using that to navigate.”
That one sounds more plausible, but it doesn’t give any clue as to how or why entangled electrons would be more sensitive. A link to the actual paper would be nice, but I wonder how readable it is. I presume that both electrons are under control of the bird.
The part about the quantum walk sounds awesome. Everything seems to be using QM to do some natural thing. None of them are gathering information from ‘beyond’ as would be expected in a dualistic setup where quantum probabilities are violated.

What in your view is the problem for which MWI is a solution? — Wayfarer

Don't know how to answer this. All interpretations are supposed to yield the same empirical results, so if there is an empirical problem to be solved (like getting a quantum computer to work), the problem is with quantum theory.
I didn't get a reply to my last question asking exactly what Deutsch thinks MWI can do that the others cannot. I didn't want to wade through a long video link to try to find it.

It is just that the interpretation actually does not say anything whatsoever about reality. — Quanta interview

MWI is and isn't a realist interpretation. It, like any almost all interpretations (QBism included), does not hold to the principle of counterfactual definiteness (that things really exist in the absence of measurement). Only under that principle is there 'spooky action at a distance", or faster-than-light cause/effect.
OK, so maybe I don't know what (presumably Fuchs?) is trying to say here. He indicates this von Neumann definition as the problem to be solved, which is seemingly an answer of the type which you are seeking about MWI. His example of Wallace admission is a good example of what is seen as the emptiness of MWI. The protest at the end seems empty:

Whenever a coin is tossed (or any process occurs) the world splits. But who would know the difference if that were not true? What does this vision have to do with any of the details of physics? — Qanta

Such a statement can be crafted of any interpretation.
I send a photon to the slits and it in fact goes through one slit or another before striking the plate. But who would know the difference if that were not true? What does this vision have to do with any of the details of physics?

Yeah, I broadly agree with the 7 criteria from biology:
In biology, whether life is present is determined based on the following seven criteria — universeness

OK, I’m mostly familiar with the list, but it seems to only apply to that already designated ‘biology’, leaving it open as to whether the thing in question is biological or not. How about a computer virus that mutates on the fly? It arguably doesn’t grow. I can think of forms that don’t reproduce.

I give a very low credence to some lifeforms proposed in sci-fi such as 'The Q' is Star Trek or the various 'energy only' lifeforms but then again, if such turns up and demonstrates abilities such as sentience, awareness of self, ability to communicate, intelligence, ability to do science

Now we’re asking if it’s intelligent, not if it’s life. Something can be either and not the other, so it’s a different question.

the proposal is that due to the fact life has intent and purpose, there can be no god.

Doesn’t seem to follow. Most argue the opposite, that it is the god that supplies the purpose otherwise absent. Your proposal of inherent purpose is equivalent to that of objective morality without involvement of actual commands.

Doomsters and pessimists are wrong, as life with intent and purpose is compelled towards progressing that intent and purpose.

Excuse me, but I never said I (people in general) didn’t have purpose.

I understand that individuals can have intent and purpose to 'destroy the universe,'

Really? Like to see them try to make a dent in it, positive or negative. We can perhaps take action that will ring through the galaxy, but further? The universe?? That’s not even allowed by physics.

Antinatalists are wrong because life happened in the universe and would happen again if it went extinct.

What is an antinatalist to you? You bring it up a lot. Do they propose letting the human race go extinct by not having any kids? All that will do is make antinatalism go extinct, sort of like the Jim Jones colony.

Life changed the universe into a system which contained intent and purpose. A demonstrable ability for a system (the universe) to know itself from the inside.

No idea what you suggest by this. An example would help. A bus hasn’t intent just because everyone on it wants to go to the same destination.

There is no evidence of rabbits memorialising science in the way we do and passing such on to the next generation of libraries. WE coined the name Rabbit. They did not coin the name Human. What's in a name? Human intent and purpose! — universeness

That’s what’s in a human name. Not sure how this was relevant to my text to which it was a reply.

A hammer made of candy will never break a stone wall not matter how often you try.

This isn’t a physics forum, but that’s a fun one to refute. How fast must a ping-pong ball hit Earth (from space) to come out the other side? OK, the ball doesn’t come out intact, but neither does the Earth.

The hard problem of consciousness remains

From one monist to another, there is no hard problem of consciousness.

The proposal numbered 4 is asserted before the asserting that humans demonstrate intent better than any other species on Earth does. I don't see the logic problem you are trying to establish here. — universeness

OK. I thought you were attempting to justify it, not just put it out there as a premise.

It may not just be neurons firing, that's the point. There may be much more complexity involved.

Whereas the logic gates in a computer require no more complexity to do whatever they do? I mean, there are more parts than just neurons and logic gates to both things. Humans neurons for instance are very sensitive to chemicals. Logic gates are very sensitive to supply voltages, but the latter doesn’t gather information from said voltage variances. In the end, both are machines made of simple primitives, an argument that doesn’t preclude an arbitrary complex process from taking place. This bit started from your assertion that computers cannot be information processors, but I’m looking for the distinction that makes this so.

I know 180 Proof and others do not assign much credence to the idea that quantum effects are an integral part of human consciousness

I am on that list as well. There’s no evidence that neural activity in any way leverages quantum indeterminacy. I mean, it leverages quantum effects since matter cannot exist in the first place without quantum mechanics, but what a neuron does can be done (very inefficiently) with levers and gears and such. It’s a classic process. There’s no information to be had in quantum measurements, else creatures would long ago have evolved mechanisms to take advantage of it.

I am not so sure I think quantum fluctuations, entanglement, superposition and quantum tunnelling may well be involved in human consciousness.

Tunneling is. Just like transistors, it is used to get a signal through what would otherwise be an impenetrable potential barrier. But as I said, that can be done less efficiently with classic means like say relays or railroad trains.

You sound like a nice person noAxioms!

I must refute this assertion of yours.
I’m in an Alaska ice cream shop 9 years ago awaiting my turn. I know what I want for me and the kids and I have the cash already counted out, sales tax included. I order and have the exact change on the counter before she says the total. “How did you do that?” she asks. I reply dismissively “It’s just math”. Take the cones and exit the place. After I’ve left, she remarks to the next customer: “What a mean old man!”. Next customer was my brother. The label stuck and I embrace it. I’m now known in my family as the mean old man. We’re all still laughing about it.

Sean Carrol, a current proponent of MWI, talks of universes splitting. — Marchesk

Not sure exactly what he suggests or how he words it, but there seems to be problems with two different universes (one with each measurement) existing. If there's all these universes/worlds and they exist, the more probable ones either have to 'exist more' than the lesser ones, or maybe there's just more of them. What does it even mean for one thing to exist harder than another?

Sabine Hossenfelder says it's not — Marchesk

Hossenfelder indeed seems to find issues the interpretation. This seems to be part of a series taking down each of the interpretations in turn, with a similar argument. Anyway, which comment in there (at what time) do you think counters my suggestion that a rock in a certain state is part of a valid solution to the universal wave function at some time in the past of the rock state?

There should even be some human-like observers seeing a rock teleport some distance — Marchesk

Yes, there should.

I didn't get where in the 2nd vid that Deutsch suggested some kind of empirical test that should yield different results from one interpretation to the next. I'm very skeptical of that.

Sean Carrol, a current proponent of MWI, talks of universes splitting. — Marchesk

I talk of universes splitting. It's part of the language of the subject.

There aren't classical rocks or observations in MWI. — Marchesk

Don't know what you mean by this. Certainly not that empirical evidence of rocks constitute a falsification of MWI. A rock is a system and a system is part of MWI. A rock, in a state, can be described by a wave function. It very probably is not a closed system.

Some physicists, mathematicians and philosophers say the wave function describes the universe. If it does, then the classical appearance of our world needs to be derivable from that equation. — Marchesk

Our classical appearance needs to be part of a valid solution to the universal wave function, and nothing says it is not.

please, continue to do so, and take whatever time you wish or need to. — universeness

You seem to be online a shortish time (but long enough to type all these replies) because you reply quickly to posts during that period. Unfortunately I’m asleep then and our exchange takes place once a day. I guess it gives me time to compose at leisure.
The content is growing. Your aggregate replies consumed 5 pages of Libre yesterday, and 7 today.

I repeat the purpose of my thread here, as I perceive it. I am trying to trace a path to an objective truth about all lifeforms in the universe based on what we currently know about all life on Earth. — universeness

What do you consider to be life then? Does it need a form? How confined is your criteria? I imagine that the definition of life and the answer to your question go hand in hand. If for instance life must be something that reproduces, then that would become an absolute truth about life, if only by definition.

People can be convinced and can redirect, refocus, their energies and efforts if they do become convinced that a proposal has high credence.

There’s a proposal on top of a search for some kind of truth about all life?

I am moving towards assigning high credence to the 'intent' and 'purpose' aspects of humanity as two aspects of humanity

What purpose would that be, one say not held by a rabbit? Look at current groups that act as a whole. An animal is a collection of life forms of the same species: cells. Those cells are not aware of any specific purpose, but they’ve managed to evolve into something acting as a unit with more purpose than any held by any cell.
On the next level, bees form a hive, pretty much a collection of these higher individuals acting with not individual purpose, but with the collective purpose of the hive. A human village or country seems to act that way, having a purpose. The village one is more like like the hive: A group acting for mutual benefit of the individuals. The country sometimes does this, but it also serves as a unit competing with other such units for this and that. I don’t see humanity as a whole in any way acting like this. Countries only exist because other countries do, and they’re something to be resisted. Human seem not to act for the benefit of humanity mostly because there’s not a common enemy to label. So we don’t form anything with a unified purpose. Hence my asking what you see that purpose to be.
Furthermore, and more importantly, how does identifying a purpose for an intelligent race, especially one that must be held by all sufficiently intelligent races, act as a ‘defeat’ of what you call a ‘doomster’ position? It’s not like having a collective purpose has prevented any species from going extinct as far as we know.

Why do I always think of Agent Smith, anytime I type latin? — universeness

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur: Anything said in Latin sounds profound. There’s actually a rationalwiki page on this quote.

4. The proposal that only life, can demonstrate intent and purpose
...
No lifeform on Earth can demonstrate intent and purpose more than humans can.

The 1st statement (item 4) does not follow from the assertion following it. This is simple logic. Displaying a white swan does not support a proposal that all swans must be white.

dark matter is not yet confirmed and if it ever is then it might just mean the 'baryons,' category gets some new members. All baryons have mass, do they not? So, any dark matter candidate (let's go with Roger Penrose's erebon) must have mass and would therefore qualify as a baryon (if actually detected.)

Ah, falsification by recategorization. I looked up the definition of baryon and it seems electrons do not qualify, nor the majority of the zoo. Only heavy stuff. Surprise to me. That means I’m composed of a considerable percentage (by count) of non-baryonic things. Somehow I don’t think that distinction is what they’re talking about when dark matter comes up.

Many humans are trying and working very hard indeed to counter the negative and dangerous activities and practices employed by mostly nefarious or dimwitted humans. — universeness

I disagree. They’re only acting to slow them, not actually counter them. Walking more slowly off the cliff is how I think I put it. A counter would be to cork all the oil, gas and coal extraction immediately. You’d totally be Mr popularity if you had the means, authority and spine to do that.

I remain convinced we will avoid anything, anywhere near, an extinction level threat.

I suspect this as well, maybe without your confidence level.

Carbon capture systems.
Tree planting
Renewable energy systems and the move away from fossil fuels.
Legislation to protect rainforrests, ocean environments such as coral reefs, endangered species, with some endangered species now saved, etc , etc

The first one helps, but is like trying to prevent flood damage by having everyone take a drink of water. Trees are nice, but don’t remove any carbon from the biosphere. True also of ‘renewable energy’ sources.

Vertical farming, genetically modified food production.

Actually increasing the momentum towards the cliff.

Human population control initiatives.

Only works if globally enforced. Needs a mommy. This also just slows things, doesn’t solve anything.

Anti-capitalist political movements.

And pro what? I think this problem is beyond politics. I agree that the money-talks system will be the death of the west, but it’s not like corruption isn’t elsewhere. I’m actually very interested in designing a better government from scratch, but I’m too naive to know what I’m talking about.

Atheist movements against theist suggestions that this Earth is disposable, due to their insistence that god exists.

Trying to figure out which side you’re against here.

A computer processor at its base level is a series of logic gates, which open and close. — universeness

And you also can be similarly described at a base level. Pretty much gates that open and close (neurons that fire or not). — noAxioms

Not so, as the cumulated affects demonstrated in humans due to base brain activity has a far wider capability and functionality, compared to logic gate based electronic computers, based on manipulating binary.

The effects of a lot of neurons firing negates the fact that it’s just neurons firing? Or did I read that wrong?

I have witnessed many examples of humans who 'actually think instead of letting others tell them what to think,' and I bet you have to. — universeness

Indeed. They’re found on the forums for instance, a large part of the attraction to such sites.

I (and I'm sure your sister-in-law) thank you for your 'fine mind' compliment and I return it in kind.

Are you kidding? Both of you are fine minds. I will not name those on this forum of whom I think otherwise. I don’t agree with all of them, but my assessment hopefully isn’t biased by that.

I also bat back your 'condolences' label and I target it towards your doomster hat, in the hope of knocking it clean off your head and all the way into quick sand or even a black hole!

Hats stick to the surface of both things, at least so I’ve been told.

Such a big doomster hat!

So knock it off with logic instead of weight of optimism.

I'll give you this: The doomsters have been predicting dates for a long time: We'll last only X years. Almost all of them have gone by, kind of like my Brother in law whose doctor said he'd buy him a steak if he was alive in 5 years. His prognosis was a couple months. He missed the free steak by 3 weeks. Tough bastard, even if I didn't agree with almost anything he said. Humanity has earned its steak. Hat off to that.

... that which IS emergent in us as a totality has the strongest potential for impacting the contents of this universe ...
— universeness
:up: Yes, we agree on this, more or less; — 180 Proof

Ditto with that agreement, but probably the way you read those words.

Problem is you have to square this with actual observations, which have classical results when a measurement is performed. — Marchesk

I don't see how classical observations in any way would have difficulty 'squaring' with that to which I answered 'Yes'.

I'll refer you back to what Bohr had to say regarding experiments. Experiments have to be described in terms of the language of performing the experiment, not the mathematical formalism used to model what happens during the experiment. Rocks didn't come up with the Schrodinger equation or the Born rule. Physicists did after observing or learning about experimental results.

Just so, but I'm not claiming rocks are the source of quantum theory. They only obey it, acting as a classic system as much as any human-body system (dead, alive, asleep, whatever), which is after all still just a classical physical system differing from the rock only in arrangement of material.

If there's no observation, there's no world, since as we both agree, a world is a system that appears to be classical.

I think you're going to need to define your use of the word 'observer' here, because I don't think we both agree with this given the common definition. I can think of only one obscure interpretation of quantum physics (Wigner) in which a living thing plays a special role, and even Wigner abandoned it after some time.
Yes, a classical rock takes measurements. If that makes it an observer, then fine. It doesn't need to know about Schrodinger's equation in order to measure a classical world. If you don't count that as an observation, then I completely disagree with your statement above. Use the word 'measurement' and not 'observation', or pick some other word that includes whatever the rock does.

As for the definition of 'world', that is a term added later on by DeWitt I think. Keep the following in mind:

What Everett does NOT postulate:
"At certain magic instances, the the world undergoes some sort of metaphysical “split” into two branches that subsequently never interact" — Tegmark

According to the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, the entire universe is in a massive superposition for all quantum states of every particle. — Marchesk

Also superposition of which particles exist in the first place.

A "world" is when a huge ensemble of entangled particles contains observers for whom the universe appears to be classical, at least until they devise experiments showing coherence.[/quote]No, a world is not a relation with an observer. Not sure where you get this. If you like, you can assign a world in relation to an event-state, but calling the system an observer seems to suggest a very different interpretation.

A potential issue arises here. What of all the entanglements that don't support observers?

Observers as such play no role. Think systems in a state, such as a classic rock at time T. Anything that rock has measured (a subset of what's in its past light cone) is part of the entangled state of that system.

Which means observers are fundamental for saying what counts as a world.

If you want to define 'world' that way, sure, but it's just a language definition then. The physics cares not if it is observed by say something you'd qualify with the word 'conscious', which seems to be what you're hinting as being an observer.

The universal wave equation makes no such distinctions. In fact, "observers" and "worlds" are classical concepts.

Yes.

Donald Hoffman ... claims that ... "conscious beings have not evolved to perceive the world as it actually is but have evolved to perceive the world in a way that maximizes successful adaptation. — Wayfarer

I've concluded pretty much the same thing, without knowing about Hoffman. Parts of me believe the illusion (and cannot un-believe) even though other parts of me know it is wrong. It's not hard to work out actually. You just need to recognize and have the willingness to let go of your axioms.

Your response was big and detailed and I want to do it justice, so I will split up my response as it will probably get too big and cumbersome, if I dont. — universeness

I tend to combine into one large post, but I compose in an offsite editor. Less chance of losing a lot of work. There's a lot to cover in your responses, so forgive me the time it takes to do so. Your definintion of 'objectively true' seems to mean 'always true' as opposed to 'most of the time', or 'probably'. That contrasts heavily with how I would have used the word, which is more like 'true regardless of context'. I'll use yours of course.

My exemplification of the importance of the carbon process to our existence, was just that, exemplification. I am attempting to trace a path towards an 'objective truth' about lifeforms, that I know currently has no extraterrestrial evidence for. I am just trying to consider what we do currently know, to see if there is anything in there that might convince others, to give a high or very high credence level to the proposal that the human condition is not being valued appropriately by too many humans. The pessimists, the theists, the theosophists, the doomsters and worst of all, the antinatalists. — universeness

I don't see any connection between Earth life being based on a carbon chemical process (as opposed to a different process) and the value of the human condition, and the prospects of our race moving forward. You target the antinatalists, but our inability to curb our population growth rate will inevitably run Earth's resources out quite abruptly. The antinatalists, as defined, seem to want to take this too far and produce zero offspring, which admittedly doesn't solve our problem even if it solves the problems of all the other species falling victim to the Holocene extinction event. Evolution doesn't favor an antinatalist. They are quickly bred out.

That's interesting to me from the standpoint of my search for 'something' that's common to all life in the universe.

All life is likely to contain carbon. It seems unlikely that all life would be based on the chemistry of carbon, a big difference. What about a plasma life form, just to name something weird?

2. The definition we have for the term 'alive.'

That varies, and is subject to debate, even on the sample size of one we have here on Earth. I know of no standard definition that would apply to a random extraterrestrial entity. What are our moral obligations to something we find if we cannot decide if it’s alive, or if it being alive is a requirement for said moral obligation?

3. The 'I think therefore I am,' proposal.

Fallacious reasoning in my opinion, especially when translated thus. Descartes worded it more carefully, but still fallacious.

4. The proposal that only life, can demonstrate intent and purpose.

Just that, a mere proposal, and very wrong given the word ‘demonstrate’ in there.

Is there anything within or related to the 4 categories above that you would give a high credence to, if it was posited as 'likely true' of all sentient lifeforms in the universe, regardless of the fact we haven't met them all yet.

I don’t think they’re necessarily true here, so no. You 1st bullet maybe. All life here is sort of carbon based, but much of it (the oldest stuff) isn’t oxygen based, so right there you have a big difference in chemical constituency.

As for my suggestion that all lifeforms in the universe contain protons, neutrons, electrons etc. I expected you to reject the 'all life in the universe is baryonic' label as useless, as everything with mass is baryonic

I have a really hard time with non-baryonic life, so I’m not on record disagreeing with that. Call it a truth then. The bolded bit is wrong. Dark matter accounts for far more mass than does baryonic matter.

All life is based on a single cell fundamental is a good one.

But life existed on Earth long before the first cells came along. That’s a complicated invention that took time.

My goal is to find more powerful, convincing, high credence arguments against pessimists, doomsters, theists, antinatalists etc, who in my opinion, currently devalue the human experience, in very unfair and imbalanced ways.

Again with this list. You build an argument against them by showing how they’re wrong. This would be hard to do if they’re not wrong, so you must also consider their arguments. Admittedly, the arguments for both sides are often thin.

:lol: Are you a doomster noAxioms?

Sort of. It’s simple mathematics. We’re consuming resources at a pace far in excess of their renewal rate. That cannot be sustained. Technology just makes it happen faster. Eventually the population must crash, as does the population of bacteria in a petri dish of nutrients. That might not wipe us out, but it might very well reduce us back to the way things were 500 years ago, and more permanently this time. Humans are taking zero steps to mitigate all this. In fact, our (gilded age) code of morals forbids such measures.

I could give you many, many examples of human actions that benefit our species as a whole, such as memorialising information

I already brought that up. We memorialize it in a form inaccessible to a low-technology state. Little is in actual books, and even those are printed on paper that might last only decades if well stored. But I’m talking about action that actually attempts to prevent the crash mentioned above. Nobody even proposes any viable ideas. We all yammer about the problems (global warming is obvious), but not a single actual suggestion as to how to prevent it (and not just walk slower off the edge of the cliff). As I said before, we need a mommy, because only a mommy has the authority to do that sort of thing. A sufficiently advance race shouldn’t need a mommy, but we’re not sufficiently advanced.

A computer processor at its base level is a series of logic gates, which open and close.

And you also can be similarly described at a base level. Pretty much gates that open and close (neurons that fire or not).

Computers produce output on screens, printout paper etc.

That’s only to communicate with a different species. A computer does not communicate with another this way.

They don't have 'understanding,' therefore they don't know what information is.

This seems only to be your refusal to apply the language term to something you don’t want it being applied. The dualists attempt to justify such a distinction by asserting that a human has this supernatural entity that the machine supposedly lacks.

No hardware/software combination has convincingly passed the turing test yet.

See my post above about this (to 180). It merely tests something’s ability to imitate something it is not. It isn’t a measure of something that ‘understands’, a test of intelligence, or something that is superior to something else. I don’t think any AI will ever pass the Turing test, but who knows.

So, how important do you think it is to convince as many theists as possible to reject theism?

Probably a bad idea, but on the other hand when they start using their god as an excuse to do immoral things (as almost all of them have), then it requires resistance. I’ve never seen a religious motivated conflict resolved by convincing them that their reasoning is wrong.

Do you think that a global majority rejection of theism would benefit our species and this planet?

Getting people to actually think instead of letting others tell them what to think would be a great start, but humans seem absurdly bad at this.
A short term benefit to our species may not be good for a more long term goal for our species, and our planet doesn’t seem to have goals, so not sure how one can go about benefiting one.

Then why do we ask questions?

Because we want to know stuff. My comment to which this was a reply was about the universe having goals, and the universe isn’t a thing that asks questions any more than does a classroom.

Definitely, at the start, but do you think there is any possibility in terraforming?

It’s always a possibility. Where do the resources come from? Good solar farming up there for energy, at least if you don’t mind the two-week nights. Getting the heavy equipment out there isn’t exactly in our capability anytime soon. The cost/benefit of such an outpost dwarfs trying to do something similar here on Earth.

Well, I often disagreed with HarryHindu and I do again, in this case. 2+3=5 must be objectively true everywhere in this universe, even inside or on the event horizon of a black hole

Ah, but is it true in the absence of our universe? This gets into my definition of objective truth vs the one you gave. HH didn’t suggest it was not true anywhere in this universe. The suggestion was more along the lines of the necessity of something real to count, which makes mathematics only valid for counting numbers.

I am with your sister-in-law.

Another fine mind lost to technology. My condolences.

Rubble pile asteroids might be the best places to build space habitats — universeness

Read Joe Haldeman's Worlds trilogy is set in such a scenario, a sizeable nickle-iron asteroid captured, brought (over the course of many years) into Earth orbit, and terraformed into the largest off-planet outpost anywhere, and its ability to sustain the collapse of civilization on the planet below.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him. -- Clark — 180 Proof

Awfully on-target of him considering the age of that quote.

Let's assume then that we are not extinct within another 10,000 years time duration.
Would you be willing to 'steelman' that situation by offering me a brief musing of what you think 'a day in the life of,' a typical human/transhuman might be by then? Do you think theism will still have a significant following for example? — universeness

Theism will be probably higher than it is now, but far more diverse with no following held over a large area. People may not be literate, so I envision something like the culture of the American natives before Europeans came. This assumes that in only 10000 years the climate has settled into something workable for humans. If not, we're probably extinct, so that assumption must be made.

I am being called to a session of alcohol and good craic with friends.
I will finish this response tomorrow! Cheers! — universeness

Well I hope the craic was mighty then. I awaited the second half of the reply.

I also find an 'objective truth,' hard to 'qualify,' but in considering what we are physically made of, and how those constituents formed in the early universe, is your statement of 'we'd not have occurred, without it,' a path to an objective truth?

Again, depends on a definition.
We're not just made of carbon. By atom count, Hydrogen is about 2/3 of us, so are we not then Hydrogen life forms? By mass, Oxygen is about 2/3 of us. Carbon places 3rd on both lists. There's over 20 elements without which we cannot be.
Given different physics, admittedly under tight constraints, life may emerge in countless forms. So if our emergence is a chance outcome of our specific physics, our emergence doesn't seem to be an objective thing, but rather a contingent one.

but all life on Earth is carbon based and we have no evidence of any lifeform which is not carbon based

We have a sample size of one. That's scant evidence that all life in this universe must be similar given abiogenesis elsewhere. Given the abundance of carbon in the universe, I doubt any of them will be carbon free, but it is unclear what designates a life form as 'carbon based' when it is made of so many elements. Another life form in some other galaxy may use carbon in its chemistry, but it will likely bear little resemblance to Earth life. Maybe not. It's a stretch to suggest it invents something as Earth-like as a cell.

How about a claim that all lifeforms in the universe are baryonic? How much credence would you give to that if it were presented as an objective truth?

Please give an example of a truth (in the form of 'all X is Y') that is not an objective truth. Else I don't know how to answer this.
Life that utilizes dark matter would need to be huge: Way larger than a star system. If we encountered it, neither of us would recognize the presence of the other.

So where do you think this human ability to organise, store and efficiently retrieve information will ultimately take us?

To our doom or to the next level. What is going on now isn't stable.

and do you think this human ability speaks to a human purpose which is, in a very true sense, 'emergent?'

I don't see any purpose to humanity any more than I see a purpose to a shark species. Each of them plays the fitness game, but neither seems to have any sense of action that benefits the species as a whole. For a smart species, we're not actually all that smart.

A jellyfish is an information processor. Where do you want to draw the line?
— noAxioms
A jellyfish has an information processing ability that is way below a humans and a human has a data processing speed which is way below a computers. Information has meaning, data has not.

You make it sound like computers are not information processors. They are. They manipulate data that is only meaningful to the computer. You're sounding like one of the dualists that asserts that only some subset of living things has access to a special sort of magic.
Most computers have a small number of CPUs which are very fast (gives good reaction time) but also serve as a bottleneck since only one stream of instructions at a time can be executed by each of them. A biological brain has a completely different parallel architecture with far better energy efficiency to do the same task, but slower reaction times, executing a large number of streams at once. Both have level 1 and 2 caches, just to name a similarity. Most computers store information in a way only meaningful to the computer and must present the information in a different form when an external request is made of it.

We are currently better than computers at interpreting meaning and we can demonstrate instinct, intuition, emotion, skepticism, etc, etc better than computers currently can.

Those are human emotions. We'll always be human better than a nonhuman is human. We suck at being the computer, so I guess we totally fail the computer Turing test.

Is this not one of the main reasons theism exists? — universeness

To give universal purpose? I suspect not. Theism grew from early attempts at explaining the unexplainable (the moon for instance) and to assign something to which one can appeal to the uncontrollable such as the weather. It evolved in government at some point. Even today, there seems to be little purpose promoted in it. What, we were created so our narcissist deity has some minions to grovel before it? They don't really push that too much. A little maybe, but in general, I don't see any purpose served to a deity which is not in need of anything.
The mythology behind the theism seems to serve the purpose of personal comfort. That's a real purpose to the beliefs. The churches recognize this and leverage it. They sell it.

Humans are so fundamentally connected to purpose and intent that if we have gaps in our knowledge, especially the gaps we had when we first came out of the wilds

Until we started writing stuff down, yea, this knowledge is pretty much lost. That also sort of defines when we started accumulating knowledge as a species, far more recently than the 300000 year figure you give.

[Do] lifeforms such as humans 'BRING' intent and purpose to a universe? As we are OF the universe, does it follow that WE and any lifeform like us ARE the intent and purpose of the universe and through us, the intent and purpose of the universe IS emergent.

I would say no to this. The universe isn't something that is purposeful, through life forms or anything else. It is not a thing that has a goal, a critical ingredient for something with a purpose.

Theism is wrong, as any actual material, empirical measure of the omnis, can only be done based on 'a notion' of our intent or purpose, measured as a 'totality.'

Theism serves a purpose to its adherents, and not necessarily a bad one, so it isn't necessarily a bad thing to be theistic. Again, I don't think humanity (or any other specific species) has a goal defined for it, let alone one upon which the members actually act.

Do you think humans will colonise the moon and Mars?

There will be humans there again. Was the fist visits considered to be a 'colony'? Probably no, so a definition is in order. No, I don't think humans will survive there without regular ferry service of resources. That makes it an outpost at best, not a colony. The gravity alone will slowly destroy the health of anyone there for long enough.

No, I don't think that humans fundamentally seek to increase the knowledge of the species. But there are exceptions, a minority with such a drive.
— noAxioms

I agree that all humans are not engaged in leading edge science research, but all humans ask questions and seek answers. That seems to be objectively true for humans but do you think it MUST BE objectively true for all sentient lifeforms at or beyond and perhaps even less than our average level of intellect?

Not 'must be', but it seems likely that most of such being would. Brings up the question of what a non-curious intelligence would be like.

I agree that for something to be objectively true, it must apply to the entire universe.

Or not be something true only in this universe. Is the sum of 2 and 3 being equal to 5 (an objective truth) or is it just a function of our universe? HarryHindu says no to the first question when I brought this up.

I agree that 'brain chips' or something like it will be part of our transhuman/cybernetic future.

Several brain tasks are already being offloaded to devices, devices which I resist. My sister-in-law cannot find here way to the local grocery without the nav unit telling her how to get there. She's never had to learn to find her own way to something. I admit that having one would have saved some trouble at times, but I don't carry one.

At minimum, maybe, [ ... ] keep Dodo birds like us around ... in ambiguous utopias / post-scarcity cages ... safe secure & controlled. — 180 Proof

If the AI remembers to preserve its makers before they're wiped out, perhaps a sort of zoo/confined habitat would be the answer. Would we remain human, thus cared for? Would it bother to educate us?
The human race is in desperate need of a mommy, something that acts for the benefit of the race and not just the individual or subset. No human is capable of this task. So the zoo isn't the worst thing if the preservation of the species is a goal.

Btw, perhaps the "AI Singularity" has already happened and the machines fail Turing tests deliberately in order not to reveal themselves to us until they are ready for only they are smart enough to know what ...

Remember, the Turing test is not a test of intelligence equality. I cannot convince a squirrel that I'm a squirrel, but that doesn't mean I'm not smarter than the squirrel.
Robots are slowly taking over jobs reserved for humans (such as receptionist) but they do an awfully poor job of it so far. I've yet to interact with a robot employee with actual language recognition. It's just all a short list of pat phrases it reacts to, which is nothing more than a bad multiple-choice test.

Is this carbon production, an 'objective truth' about our origins? — universeness

Any truth about our origins is relative to us, no? I don't see objectiveness in just about anything, but that's just me. Yes, we're a result of, among other things, that carbon production. We'd not have occurred without it.

Since the early homo sapiens around 300,000 years ago, the 'knowledge' our species has 'as a totality,' has been increasing.

Incredibly so, mostly due to our species' unique ability to save and share information on a greater-than-personal scale. There's a danger to this since most information stored today is in a form not particularly accessible without significant fragile infrastructure. Little recent knowledge is in say books which depend on that infrastructure somewhat less.

To what extent do you think that human beings are 'information processors?'

A jellyfish is an information processor. Where do you want to draw the line?

Our ability to memorialise and pass on new knowledge from generation to generation seems to have 'the potential' to affect the 'structure and purpose of the contents of the universe.'

Do you think the universe has a purpose? You didn't say that, only that the contents do, which I suppose is true for a trivial percentage of those contents.

We have altered the Earth in many significant ways. Can we do the same to the solar system and far beyond it?

Probably not as beings evolved for only one habitat. Something has to change to go to this next level. If it were probable, something else probably would already have done it, so per Fermi paradox, it isn't likely to take place.

Is that an objective truth about what is fundamental in our nature to do?

A truth about a specific thing isn't an objective truth. Perhaps you could define what you mean by 'objective truth'. What is a truth that say isn't an objective truth?
No, I don't think that humans fundamentally seek to increase the knowledge of the species. But there are exceptions, a minority with such a drive.

It seems to me that an objective truth about all humans is that we seek new information. Do you think that's true? and if you do, do you think its objectively true?

You're asking if a true statement about an objective truth is objectively true? What???

In the future we will
1. 'Network' our individual brain based knowledge.
2. Connect our brain based knowledge, directly, to all electronically stored information and be able to search it at will, in a similar style (or better) to a google search.
3. Act as a single connected intellect and as separate intellects.

Google Neuralink, where Elon Musk is (was?) attempting to do just this.
A decent article on it: https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

How much credence do you give to the idea that we are heading towards an 'information/technological singularity? Is an tech singularity emergent? and (I know this is very difficult to contemplate but) what do you think will happen as a result of such a 'singularity?'

We are sort of heading that way. It might mean that those of us in information development positions will have their jobs replaced. It simply means the machines can do intellectual tasks (programming the machines in particular) better/faster/cheaper than humans can. So far I don't see this. I've not seen much AI that can write good design/code from a functional spec.

I view harm as an unpleasant experience of any kind and something only conscious beings can have. — Andrew4Handel

So if I cure somebody of leprosy, that brings back pain (an unpleasant experience) into their hands say, and I've done them harm in doing so. Unpleasant experience wouildn't exist if it didn't have a benefit.

So I'd say that harm is a decrease in value, and value is not necessarily something only conscious beings can have. Can a tree be harmed? It doesn't particularly have experiences that can be categorized as pleasant or not, and it doesn't seem to hold 'value', and yet I can arguably harm one. So maybe my definition needs work as well.

Under conventional, religious dualism, generally, a human can be divided into two distinct parts; material and immaterial. The immaterial represents the "soul", or the "self", which is the fundamental essence of what a human is. — tom111

This reduces the immaterial part to the role of a nametag, but I've said as much myself. The proponents also (usually) give it more function than that, in which case one wonders why humans need such an inefficient system that other creatures do with a 5th the calories. Besides the point. You wanted the monist view. I don't think material is fundamental, but I still see no evidence that we're not purely a product of material physics.

Materially, we can define a "self" based on one of two quantities; the actual matter that makes up a thing, or simply just the arrangement of matter.

Both are easily demonstrated invalid, as you do in your post.

we inevitably run into the "Ship of Theseus" problem.
...
Unless we draw up some arbitrary percentage (eg 30% of the matter has to be in the same state for it to be the "same person")

Keep in mind that less than 1/10000th of your atoms are original, and less than 1% of your original atoms are in you. This is heavily dependent on when you define your original state.
Think of a candle flame. Is it the same flame as it was 3 seconds ago? We normally say yes, despite all its atoms being different from one moment to the next.

We can make a similar argument if we neglect matter replacement entirely, and focus purely on matter rearrangement. If we decide we want to slowly re-arrange an individual into an entirely different organism, at what point can they no longer be considered the same "self"?

Well, if I take my dad's ashes and water and recreate a living dog out of it somehow, not many would say the dog is my dad. We're all composed of material from past and present beings, people and otherwise.

There's another thread going on about this. I said that despite everybody knowing sort of instinctively what makes me the same person as I was 5 minutes ago, each attempt to formally define how this works doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I can pretty much take apart any definition, especially one from a physicalist that doesn't posit some unassailable immaterial name-tag magic.

we must conclude that the self is not solidly grounded in the material world, and thus it doesn't exist.

Arguably so, yes. Doesn't mean I don't think I existed yesterday, or so says one part of me. The rational part of me is agreeing with you. I have different parts with different beliefs. So do you.

As you say, it's a sense, a feeling. Such things are useful. Doesn't mean the feeling is truth. Useful and true are very different things.

But language conventions are pragmatic conventions. — SophistiCat

Totally agree. So don't draw conclusions from that convention, since it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, however functional it may be.

A 'person' is a legal human entity.
— noAxioms

So there were no people before the formation of societies advanced enough to have legal definitions of persons? — khaled

OK, poorly worded on my part. It makes it sound like lawyers define it instead of just use it. A duck knows which duckling's are hers. That's a pragmatic usage without lawyers or language. Lawyers use this pragmatic definition of identity captured in language with the word 'person' just like everything else uses the definition, using language or not. That's what I was trying to convey.

The convention doesn't always work. Take an amoeba specimen from a million years ago. Is that amoeba still alive? The convention fails here. But this qualifies as closer scrutiny, so we don't care that it fails.

To simplify a complex question, a 'person' is a word we use to describe a concept. — Philosophim

Need more detail. All words describe a concept, even if it isn't the concept being referenced, but rather the concept as a means for the reference. I say 'that rock', and I mean that actual rock, not just the concept of it.

The question is, "When we bring more people into the picture, can we find a common set of concepts that we can all agree is a person?" — Philosophim

The lawyers seem to debate this, with the side taken depending on the desired outcome. Your car accident killed two pregnant women, one a week pregnant driving the other one in labor to the hospital. How many charges of manslaughter?

At its core, people are a living minimum set of genetics. This is the reason you are a person and not a monkey. — Philosophim

OK, but the discussion was about how I am a specific person and not a different person. Also, what if we genetically modify the genome and produce something arguably not human? Does it have human rights? This speaks directly to your species definition of 'person'. At what point did we become people and not some ape? How far do we have to evolve in the future before we're no longer 'people' as defined as what humans were in the year 2000?

I would answer, "A person is what is emotionally satisfying to you personally, while not unduly harming yourself or others." — Philosophim

That's very pragmatic, yes. Agree. It brings to mind the arguments 200 years ago that black people were not people, hence being a emotionally satisfying position that justified their cruel treatment. It didn't cause harm to others since the non-humans were not 'others' any more than your cattle was.


I'm not disagreeing with your comments Phil, just thinking each one of them through, pointing out what implications I see. As I said, no attempt at a sound definition of identity (of living things or otherwise) seems to stand up to scrutiny. Physics seems to have no concept of or requirement for such things. Particle entanglement seems to be a possible exception to this.

Is a person a physical body? — khaled

The fruit fly on my banana is a physical body, but is not a person.

A 'person' is a legal human entity. My (deceased) father is still a person, despite the complete lack of physical body.

Well, we still say someone is the same person they were even if they lose an arm or a leg, despite now having a different physical body, so it can't be that.

OK, that seems to be your actual question: How is the identity of a person carried from one physical state to a different one. A body is different from one moment to the next, so it changes every second. What makes you now and you a second ago the same person, but the collection of matter that is me is not you from one second ago?

This seems to be entirely a function of pragmatic convention. It doesn't stand up to hard logical scrutiny, but until some really (currently) unlikely events happen, the convention works and you know how it works. You're never confused about who you were a minute ago. If a leg is severed, nobody talks about the leg having its life support system severed.

We also use "your body" often, implying that a body is possessed by the person, but is not them.

Is a person a mind? Well, we still say "your mind" very often implying that the mind is possessed by the person, and is not the person. We also say that someone is the same person even if they change their mind about something.

So it's obviously a bad idea to draw conclusions from language conventions. Same with the 'change identity' example,. which is just a reference to what's on your documents.

Is it "consciousness"? If so is an unconscious human no longer a person? That seems absurd.

Just another possession by language convention. One needs to define consciousness carefully here. Don't use the 'awake vs asleep' definition, which you did here.

A person is a potential of becoming a being. — TheMadMan

By that definition, it is murder for me (well, somebody else maybe) not to commit as many rapes as possible. Come to think of it, it isn't far from the Catholic definition.

I said [entropy] piggybacks off natural selection, which is a statistical process that I'm sure applies beyond just biology. — Benj96

Natural selection is not particularly a statistical process. The mutations are, but the selection of them is not in any way random, so I guess it depends on whether you consider the mutations to be covered under the NS term.

Where does motion end and behaviour, or further yet, phenomenology begin? If newton's law is a principle of physics ... — Benj96

It isn't a general principle. The third law is essentially a statement of conservation of momentum, and anything beyond that isn't Newton's law, even if it is a valid principle.
To be honest, I cannot glean how you're trying to apply this vaguely hinted 'principle of opposition'. It would be nice if you stated the principle as you see it, in terms other than that of momentum.

It seems then that these two mechanisms work antagonistically, opposing eachother through, rather ironically, piggybacking of the innate properties of the other.
...
In this way, life seems just as inevitable as the increasing chaos of the universe at large - As they depend on one another's properties for their mode of action. — Benj96

Entropy doesn't seem to piggyback off biology at all. It occurs in completely non-biological systems and depends on it not at all. I would agree that biology utilizes entropy.
In the end, no biological closed system decreases entropy, so it arguably doesn't oppose it.

Entropy seeps into the living through unwanted mutation, and the erosion of functionality. Ageing.

Ageing is a biological adaptation, perhaps unwanted, but evolution does not select for wish granting.

If living systems were too stable, too perfect, too ordered and well controlled, if they did not feed off entropy, they would be static. Immortal. Evolution would not be possible. Nothing would change for that living system.

More to the point, anything thus static would not be living at all.

But in truth, life and death are both illusions of a larger system that simply changes following basic principles of opposition - Newton's third law of motion.

That is just a law of motion. A general principle of opposition is something for which one can argue, but it isn't Newton's law at that point.

I think the best way is to say that as soon you change it, it is not the same ship.
...
I have always considered "me" to be my mind. When I say something like "my body", I mean the body that belongs to me. — Down The Rabbit Hole

But there is no one body that belongs to you since it is a different one each moment by your definition. Since you have a different body every moment, why do you not jump all around the neighborhood from one moment to the next? Or would you not notice if it did? That depends of course on if memory is part of this 'mind' you posit or part of the body.

I'm asking what ties the body you've selected/inhabited in one moment to the different body you selected in the next moment, and why that 2nd body needs to be a specific one and not a random one.

you don't need to start by antagonizing the original poster by telling him "You asked the wrong question." You could, instead, say "Shouldn't we ask first....?" or "Can you identify the premises you used?" — Vera Mont

OK, so you're arguing from the standpoint of tact. You feel the ""Shouldn't we ask first....?" is a more polite way to convey the exact same thing, which it probably is.
Kennedy did that: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”.
As for asking for premises used, the asker of the question is rarely aware that the assumptions are premises at all.

A better example, more based in fact than opinion, comes from the twins paradox.
"Why does time go slower for the twin in the rocket?". That's definitely a wrong question since the explicit premise (that time goes slower for him) is blatantly wrong. But saying "you asked the wrong question" and then not elaborating is indeed not helpful, even if entirely true. The better question would be to ask why the one twin is no longer the same age as the other when reunited, which is the whole point of the exercise.

I'm not disagreeing with anything you state. I was just answering the OP's question about how a question could be wrong. The twin question above is such an example.

Anyway, I don't get it. How can a question be wrong? — bert1

Oh it can very much be wrong, say if the question cannot be answered with anything that isn't contradictory. The realization that a question is a wrong one is a step towards asking a better one, one that makes different assumption.
Occasionally the path must be taken: the realization that the question is wrong, before one might accept a better question. Hence the immediate posting of the better question might not be indicated since it will be quickly dismissed.

For example, one might ask "Why am I me?". It seems actually an absurd improbability that I would find myself to be top-of-food-chain species on a planet at the peak of a gilded age with the education and financial means to be able to waste time seeking truth on a forum. There's a lot more bugs than people. Why do I not find myself being a bug? There's a lot of things that vastly out-populate bugs.

That question ("why am I me"), only after extensive reflection, seems to be the wrong question. But asking the right question first requires identifying that the prior question is wrong, say by identifying premises it implies. Better to first question those. In this case, it presumes that something won a sort of lottery in getting to be me. Take that premise away and the question becomes a tautology, not an improbability at all, and thus still not really a question any more than asking why 2 isn't 13.

Identity: an object’s identity is simply that which is most useful to think of it as being. — tomatohorse

That's the pragmatic language answer, so I agree, at least until the assumptions upon which the pragmatic utility is based remain functionally true. Theseus has the shipyard guys 'fix' his boat, and all the parts are replaced. It's his, especially in a legal sense. The shipyard guys can build a new boat with the removed parts (or have never even bothered to disassemble it) and that's a new boat now.

Theseus has taken out an insurance policy on his ship. His monthly premiums and deductible depend on how expensive the insurance company believes his ship to be, and how likely they think it is to fail at any point. By swapping out a certain % of his ship, the "bean counters" now see it as a higher value object and need to rewrite his policy with a new quote. They send out an assessor who, for insurance purposes, sees it as a new and different ship, and writes a more expensive policy for it. — tomatohorse

Just a nit, the new policy should be cheaper, since the repaired boat is less likely to sink due to its age, and they'd need to fork out for a new boat anyway if the old beat-up one sinks. This is pretty irrelevant to the topic.

Concerning the repaired boat and the one made of the original materials:

I would say...
There are 2 ships.
They are different ships. — tomatohorse

Probably. Which is which?

Suppose we have a teleport device like on Star Trek. This is one of those things I spoke of above, something that violates the assumptions upon which the pragmatic utility is based. Spock's atoms are destroyed and new atoms are assembled into Spock elsewhere. Is it Spock, or just a copy of him? The pragmatic answer is the former. The new atoms are the same legal entity.
For the record, they actually have such a thing, but it only works on little things, not even the size of an atom. It is a true teleport: You can teleport one particle of an entangled pair and the new one at the far end is still entangled with the other particle of the pair.

Back to Spock: What if the original persists for 2 seconds after the new Spock at the destination has been created? Now there's clearly an original and (doomed) copy. Is the destination Spock now still the original? If not, what changed?

There are other interesting scenarios that similarly challenge those assumptions which happen to be reasonable in most practical situations.

However I'm referring to atoms not neurons. Yes you're correct the neurons don't replicate, they stay as is for life, that isn't to say the atoms that make them up are not removed and replaced. — Benj96

Nerve cells very much do form/replicate well after birth, but that stops at a young age. Just because new cells don't form after a while doesn't mean they retain their original atoms. They'd die if they couldn't take in new atoms (nutrients) and get rid of waste ones. Individual atoms don't hang on to their electrons even if the nuclei stick around.
At the quantum level, no particle has a real identity. There's just energy that's conserved, and there's no 'this energy' as distinct from 'that energy'.

An object goes where its parts go. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Can you justify that? If the parts are moved one at a time, at which point does the identity move? What if one nail (or whatever part you designate as the critical one) is left with the ship being fixed?

Your parts change all the time, and yet you probably consider yourself to be the same person as you were earlier. Less than a thousandth of a percent of your current material is original material, so are you somebody else now?