We will never encounter or be discovered by another civilization given the short life expectancy of any intelligence and the incomprehensible vastness of space and time. — magritte

It would have to be rare to the point of basically being unique for this alone to work as the solution to the Fermi paradox.

As big as space is, when you crunch the numbers, you find that self replicating probes, generation starships etc could litter the Galaxy in a fraction of the Galaxy's age.
And humans are right on the cusp of achieving this technological level -- a few centuries or even millennia is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Sure, we could wipe ourselves out totally between now and then.
But if so, we still got pretty close.

A primate species, more violent and tribal than most other primate species (or other near-sapient terrestrial species) got as far as launching crude probes out of its star system.
This suggests to me that if intelligent life is as common as, say, 1 in a billion star systems, distance and civilization lifespan is insufficient to explain the lack of evidence.

How do you know though, that it was really in your best interest to try? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because I know since pushing myself more, I get more opportunities in my career, relationships and general interests and hobbies.

My point is that, being introvert can become part of someone's identity, and be self limiting, the same way that, say, "I'm hopeless with computers" can be.

I like where I am in my life now. My personality is introverted and solitary and I'm not going to kid myself about that. But, just like a naturally chatty person might find advantage in being silent now and then, sometimes it's worth my while to play the social role.

I think there is a danger with these kinds of labels -- I think they can be self limiting.
I always thought of myself as an introvert, and I am, but the problem is it became an excuse to dodge socializing, even in situations where it was really in my best interest to try.

And frankly there can be a smugness to the introvert thing, at least in the west. You listen to conversations, and think to yourself you'd have something more profound to say, rather than all that jibber jabber. Damn this shyness! Rather than putting yourself out there.

It's true that a lot of the time we can be unaware of the full dangers of using a technology, like the ozone layer example.
But when we do know, the issue is human nature, not science.

If there's an issue with science it is the difficulty of advancing human knowledge now. Many experiments are greatly increasing in expense. And the results they reveal are understood by only people with a postgrad education in a close field.
So the general public often prefer to engage in fantasy; pseudoscience, conspiracy theories and misleading pop articles (e.g. eggs cure cancer or whatever)

The problem is, that the rate of expansion which you give is based in conclusions about the relation between gravity and spatial expansion derived from models which employ a center of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have said that our understanding of gravity is flawed.
The theory of gravity itself does not include the suggestion that we necessarily find the center of gravity.

However, finding the center of gravity is a useful mathematical simplification, and has been proven to result in accurate predictions.

Cosmologists really do not know the rate of expansion, or how it might vary from one place to another, or vary from small scale to large scale, or even the simple issue of how gravity effects it, or how expansion effects gravity.. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have this backwards.
Dark energy is a phenomenon we have discovered on the largest cosmological scales. At those scales it appears proportional to distance.
We assume this force operates on all scales, and when we do the calculations, we find that if the force is proportional to distance then it should be immeasurably small on earthly scales, and completely cancelled out by gravity within our galaxy.

So it's not that we need to prove that cosmic expansion does not have significant effects on smaller scales. It's that the null hypothesis is that there are no such effects until we see them.

The fact is that spatial expansion is very real, and if its effects at a small scale are just incorporated into the model of gravity as one representation, called gravity, then this model is flawed, in the sense of incorrect. It is incorrect because it does not separate out the effects of expansion from the effects of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover

No model of gravity includes cosmic expansion. This is just flat out wrong.

I don't understand why you would describe something faster than the speed of light as "slowly pushed apart". — Metaphysician Undercover

Because I am speaking relative to the distances between the objects.
We're talking about galaxies millions or billions of light years apart.

I'll start with your last set of questions first, as it's the most concrete point. I'll get to the rest when I get time.

quote="Metaphysician Undercover;476559"]We're discussing the calculations you insisted would be the same.[/quote]

No, I'm not insisting they are the same. I am explaining the theory of dark energy / cosmic expansion since you have got basic details about the theory wrong even as you're rejecting it.

Why do the numbers which account for spatial expansion not show up in calculations concerning measured distances inside the galaxy, inside my body, and inside my body's nuclei (whatever that means), yet they do show up in calculations concerning measured distances external to galaxies? — Metaphysician Undercover

For two reasons.
Firstly, the expansion is approximately 6 km per megaparsec per second. Scaling that to the human body, say, we get an expansion rate of around one ten thousandth of the width of a proton... This doesn't make a huge difference when calculating eg the gravitational force on a human on Earth.

And secondly, on scales up to anything intra-galactic, the expansion is not enough to overcome gravity. The Stars in our galaxy are locked in a spiral due to the powerful gravity of Sagittarius A and the forces between the Stars. Spatial expansion is just too slow to put stars on an escape trajectory, so they stay locked in their orbits.
But, since gravity falls off with the square of distance, over vast scales, galaxies can be slowly pushed apart by this expansion.

I did that already, very clearly and concisely, the utilization of the concept of a center of gravity, or the center of mass. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, please publish your data and receive your Nobel prize. If you're right and physicists are wrong, that's a big deal and you should reap those rewards.

OK, so you say that whether or not the understanding which science gives us is flawed, is determined by its ability to predict, but the capacity to predict is not a goal of science. That is a great example of inconsistency, the success or failure of science in relation to understanding, is determined by the capacity to predict, but this in not its goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

No inconsistency. We're simply talking about means versus ends here.
I might test whether my car's tires are inflated by kicking them. Is my goal to kick tires?

Flawed does not imply incorrect. It implies imperfect, and incomplete is a type of imperfection. "Incorrect" requires a judgement of right or wrong, and a judgement of imperfect has no such implication. — Metaphysician Undercover

We could argue over the semantics, but let's just say that within the context of scientific models, saying a model is "flawed" would absolutely be understood as meaning the model makes incorrect predictions or inferences in some context.
If flawed simply meant incomplete then, like I say, we could argue all of science is flawed because we can never know any model is complete. It would be, at best, a meaningless word, and at worst horribly misleading.

You'll know that the concept of "spatial expansion" only applies to space between objects, not the space within objects — Metaphysician Undercover

This is incorrect.
All of space appears to be expanding, according to our best model. Inside the galaxy, outside the galaxy, inside your body, inside your body's nuclei.

The reason we don't see this expansion is because it is small over these scales (even over the scale of the galaxy), and swamped by the gravitational force that is binding these various things together.

Are we done here? Was all of this based on this common misconception?

When did science relinquish logic from its tool box, opting to grandstand predictive power as the only principle for judgement? — Metaphysician Undercover

See my reply to jgill above.
Science hasn't relinquished anything; it's an incredibly useful methodology that we are choosing to continue to use.

When it became apparent that lightening strikes were not Zeus hurling thunderbolts from Olympus. — jgill

Quite.

It's not that science turned away from logic (whatever that would mean).

It's that science comes with a toolbox for gaining an understanding of our environment. This toolbox includes testing ideas, based on predictive or inferential power, and it has been incredibly successful. As evidenced by me being able to press buttons in front of me and milliseconds later anyone in the world can read and respond to my comments.

If anyone wishes to suggest science should be using a different methodology then step 1 is showing what this alternative method allows us to accomplish.

Black is the qualia that first made me realize that color is not "out there".
But some people still don't quite get it, so you might find a better example is certain composite colors like magenta. There is no single wavelength of EM radiation that will make a human see magenta; the right cone activation only happens from two different wavelengths hitting that patch of the retina. But, we know those photons don't actually "mix", or interact with each other. So how can magenta be "out there"?

No what I meant was your allusions to things like your definitions of action and living matter, for which we're supposed to go and find from other discussions.

I said it as a claim of philosophical understanding. Philosophers are allowed to judge scientific principles, in case you didn't know this. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you're making a specific claim about an area of physics. It's like if I claimed that in bowling 3 strikes in a row is called an Emu, and when someone corrects me I say "Ah but this is my philosophical understanding".
If you wish to claim that our understanding of gravity is flawed, it's on you to show how. And an explanation of the science underpinning our understanding of gravity is absolutely relevant.

And if you posit prediction as the highest goal for science — Metaphysician Undercover

...which of course I didn't. I said that prediction and inference is the measure (or test) of how much we understand something.
It's a critical part (the critical part) of the scientific method, but not a goal in itself.

I'm sure you respect the fact that our understanding of gravity is less than perfect, or as you imply, not "complete". Why are you incapable of proceeding logically form this premise, to conclude therefore that our understanding is "flawed". — Metaphysician Undercover

Because "flawed" and "incomplete" are not synoyms.
Our knowledge of essentially everything is incomplete. It's a bit of a running joke that all scientific papers include the line "more research is needed".

Flawed OTOH implies incorrect. If we say all our knowledge is incorrect, that would be worse than knowing nothing whatsoever. If that's the case, how come we can make jet planes and computers and cathedrals?

The principal flaw, which sticks out like a sore thumb to me, is the practice of modeling a physical object as having a center of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you prefer, we could model objects as being the composite effect of countless trillions of subatomic particles (and indeed, throw out the idea of objects larger than subatomic particles existing at all, and do the calculations on all particles independently). But we know that when we do calculations like that, the answer comes out essentially the same as if we had modelled it as objects with centers of gravity.
But sure, knock yourself out; do the calculations the slow way if you prefer. If you ever find your calculations are non-negligibly more accurate than physicists', then congratulations on your Nobel prize.

On what principles ought we base "better" and "worse" on, in relation to levels of understanding? I think that we ought base our levels of better and worse on principles of truth and falsity. — Metaphysician Undercover

We don't know whether a non-falsified model is true or not.
The closest we can get is to gain confidence in models based on their predictive power.

I would agree with you that truth would be better than predictive power, but sadly this universe does not feature a magic scorecard that tells us when we got something right. Predictive power is the best we have.

I actually like attempts to define free will, if only because they might end the nonsensical "Do we have free will?" debate, which, in my view, is 99% an issue with the definition itself.
That is to say, the popular idea of free will is self-inconsistent, and can't exist in any reality. Its non-existence tells us nothing about ourselves and our own reality. IMO

However I doubt that you will get many responses while the argument is like a wiki; not merely linking to definitions elsewhere, but linking to other threads where who knows how much needs to be read until a term is finally defined (is reading the OPs sufficient)?

Personally I would prefer a long essay if it is at least self-contained.

In philosophy we do not judge an understanding by the ability to make predictions. — Metaphysician Undercover

You said that our understanding of gravity is "flawed" and "primitive". This is a claim of scientific understanding, not philosophy.

Thales predicted a solar eclipse, when they did not even know back then, that the earth revolves around the sun. The capacity to predict is developed by applying mathematics to repetitive patterns which may have slight variations. — Metaphysician Undercover

Firstly, finding repetitive patterns is one way of making predictions. In science we more commonly make detailed models of systems in the environment.

But secondly, yes, if someone can predict the occurrence of an eclipse then they do have an understanding. Thales understanding was not as complete as ours...assuming the story is true (and it is disputed) he would not have been able to predict eclipses many years in the future, or on what area of the earth totality would be visible, how long it would last in different places etc etc.
But yes, the measure of understanding is correct predictions and inferences; if you can make crude predictions then you understand the phenomenon on at least one level.
It's not all-or-nothing in science, you can have levels of understanding.

That's what I'm arguing against, on the basis that physics itself is currently so open-ended that it can't be considered 'closed' in the sense that 'the causal closure' argument wants to appeal to. Sure, you can keep changing the definition of what constitutes 'the physical', but then, how is that 'closed'? It amounts to unending ad hoc extensions to your basic theory. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I could agree with this. Defining physicalism as "closed" might well be misleading and pointless (incidentally, I neither call myself a physicalist nor materialist as I think they make unnecessary claims).

But again let's be clear that these philosophies grew mostly out of a rejection of things like mysticism.

So, if it were the case that, say, we found that prayer works and then scientists and philosophers were to declare that prayer is now physics, then the distinction between these philosophies has been lost, and the concept of "physical" is open-ended enough as to be meaningless.

But that's very different from what's happening with dark matter. Dark matter is something predicted by our existing physical models and which appears to behave as a form of matter, nothing particularly magical about it.

The idea that our understanding of gravity is flawed ought to be taken as a given, rather than rejected and argued against. The commonly employed representation of a center of mass, or center of gravity is so ridiculously primitive, and cannot provide anything close to a real representation of the relationship between a massive object and its gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't emphasize enough, that the way we measure our level of understanding is in our power to make good predictions and inferences.

IMO Dennett's idea of consciousness is just a bunch of handwaves, and doesn't actually allow us to infer anything useful: it's not a real understanding.

But gravity OTOH, is clearly something humans understand very well. We can predict where the solar system planets will be in thousands of years time, or the return of a comet centuries from now. We can use slingshot effects to send our spaceships out on desired trajectories. We can create elaborate physical structures on earth, and calculate all the forces involved. And we can run models on things like galaxies merging and see that such events in the universe validate our models.

If this is not a "real representation", you'll have to explain to me what you mean by that concept.

I never got the split between physicalism and idealism for this reason, it seems physicalists are playing dirty by changing what counts as "physical" every few decades, leaving no room for something to be "non-physical" — khaled

I'd actually say it's the other way round.
Alternatives to physicalism generally suggest that there are mental or spiritual aspects of the universe itself.
Do you think probability waves count as evidence for *that*?

That said, on consciousness specifically, I don't want to see any handwaves of it being purely physical until we have a model with explanatory power of subjective states. You can find many posts of me arguing this on this forum.

I mean, presently, it is presumed that some unknown substance, provisionally titled 'dark matter', has observable effects on the cosmological observations, but it's nature is unknown. So how can it be known that it is physical? — Wayfarer

Let's go back a step first.
You've now agreed with me that physicalism does *not* make the claim that we know everything about the physical universe.
So what it actually is, is just the proposition that physical causes and effects are all that exists, even while we don't yet know of, or fully understand, all physical events and mechanisms.

Now let's come back to dark matter.
The reason we even started to suspect such a thing exists is because of physical events we see in the universe. We think it itself is a physical thing, and that's been backed up with empirical data such as seeing gravitational lensing.

Why would you think this presents a problem for physicalism?

Do you feel the same way about other potential additions to the standard model, like gravitons or sterile neutrinos?

Don’t you think that covers a lot of what goes by the name ‘philosophical materialism’? — Wayfarer

No, I don't think that. Do you?
And if so, on what basis?

Yet another iteration of "science doesn't know everything there is to know, therefore physicalism is false." — SophistiCat

Yep. Hate to see it.

What about the idea that the mass/energy of 96% of the universe is of an unknown type if ‘straightforward’? Ought not that be considered mystifying or surprising? — Wayfarer

I meant straightforward in terms of comparative ease of understanding. I mean, you just summarized the theory in 14 words, you can't do that with all areas of modern physics.

In terms of it being mystifying or surprising, sure, it could be those too if you like.

What I’ve said is that ‘dark matter’ undermines the philosophical idea of the ‘causal closure of the physical’. It does this by showing that our ideas of ‘the physical’ must be radically deficient in some way. — Wayfarer

Really? Why? We have no reason to consider dark matter as non-physical; it has physical effects and it's in turn affected by physical forces.

If your point is that it shows we don't know everything about the physical universe, well scientists have never thought that (there were a couple of times where the consensus was we were close).
So any version of materialism that assumed absolute knowledge was flawed from the very start.

I think an issue here is with the 96%. This is just a measure of how much of the universe's total mass/energy is accounted for by each phenomenon.
A number of pop sci articles phrase it as some version of "We don't understand 96% of the universe". It makes for eye-catching headlines, but it's a very misleading way of putting it.
The "size" of our understanding is not correlated with the relative proportions of these phenomena.

The only thing known, as the galactic mass behaves as if it is subject to the gravity from an unknown source, which is presumed to be a form of matter. — Wayfarer

It's more than just that. Galaxies' star rotation velocities were the original reason for positing dark matter, but there are numerous other lines of evidence at this point; from gravitational lensing (both inside and between galaxies), the CMB and models of the distribution of visible matter, analysis of redshift and so on.

And of course, ironically, one of the best evidence we've found that dark matter must be some kind of discrete material, are the galaxies we've found without it.
It's very rare, but there are a few galaxies that contain stars with rotation velocities exactly what we'd expect from a Newtonian model of star rotation. If dark matter is discrete material, explaining a few galaxies that lack it is no problem. But it's a big problem for alternative hypotheses, like that our understanding of gravity is flawed.

And yet folk really seem to go for this dark matter mystery. Curious. — apokrisis

Well, the weird stuff in most of theoretical physics is beyond the layman's comprehension; you really need at least higher mathematics but also probably to have actually studied physics beyond the high school level to even understand the claims.

Dark matter on the other hand, sounds like a straightforward theory. Plus it's often reported as if it's just scientists taking a wild guess. So people think their own wild guesses can be on an equal footing.

I used to dislike the name "dark matter", but now I think that if it had been called something unique or cool sounding we'd have easily 10x the amount of woo and misconception as we do right now. "Dark matter" is actually a pretty prosaic name all told.

The problem with the wiki, and the OP, is the conflation between whether an action has benefit to the individual, and whether it was motivated by benefit to the individual.

The fact that I can think of a benefit of some action does not prove that that's the reason the individual performed that action.

I'll give a trivial example to illustrate this.

If a flame touches your hand, there is a reflex action to jerk your hand away. This happens *before* the sensation of touching the flame even reaches your brain.

What's the benefit of this action? Well obviously it minimizes the extent of any potential burn to the body.

What motivated me to jerk my hand away?
Nothing. Because, while there's a reason the reflex was selected by evolution, no part of my body or mind needs to know why that action should be performed, any more than I would need to instinctively know why my femur has the shape it has. It just is. Individuals with a femur like mine disproportionately survived. And individuals with a reflex like mine disproportionately survived.

You might say that this is a silly example; since we're talking about something that doesn't go through the brain, this is entirely a phenomenon of the body. Sure. But I want to be sure first that we're all on the same page that there is a distinction between why something evolved, what the benefits are for an action, and the motivation for an action.
I can give examples of conscious actions in my next post :)

With that definition, wouldn't instinctive acts be excluded? Caring for young is genetically self-interested, therefore, behaviors that stem from that instinct shouldn't be considered as altruistic. — 8livesleft

Well we need to be consistent, and not engage in a bait-and-switch.

If we want to say that all instincts are selfish, because they are the product of natural selection, that's fine, but "selfish" here means serving the gene pool of the entire group, not the typical colloquial meaning of "selfish".

If we want to use colloquial "selfish", and use it as a jumping-off point for talking about how it's a dog eat dog world and we're all out for ourselves...then no, not all instincts are selfish.

So, relating that to humans, we tend to think that there's some sort of higher purpose or order — 8livesleft

Quite the contrary.
I'm saying that human behaviour is complex and often quite difficult to pare down to a single instinct.
If there is some over-arching interpretation of all human actions, then a case needs to be made for that. I do not believe such a case has been made in this thread yet.

I don't see how say a cow raising a wolf can be beneficial to the herd. — 8livesleft

I was speaking of "the group" in the widest possible sense, because we were talking about altruism. When talking about human altruism, we normally consider the most altruistic acts as the furthest from provides any material benefit to ourselves.

The question is are acts of instinct - which in the evolutionary sense are based on self or genetic preservation, altruistic? Here, the cow is acting on instinct to care for a wolf cub.

And, as I say, my answer is I'm ambivalent, and only insist on consistencies. If some animal actions are vicious, or spiteful or greedy, then absolutely there are actions that fulfill the requirements for being altruistic or selfless. If we are preferring not to consider instinctual behaviour in this way, then let's not use any of those kinds of adjectives.

Does it help if I’m talking about time and the evolution of man, not what happened last year. — Brett

Sure.

Let me give an example. Let's say we're talking about "playfulness". Now, it's not hard to think of how that behaviour may have had survival benefits: it involves learning about the world and our own bodies, training for activities like hunting or fleeing, and group bonding.

So that's why the playfulness instinct exists.
But a sentient species can press the play button any way and as often as it likes. If I, as a 41 year old man choose to spend a whole weekend playing board games, that's up to me and it has nothing to do with survival. Where the instinct came from is its story, not mine.

My point here is of an organism not competing and that the action of not competing was an aberration. — Brett

Sure, and that's what I understood. What I am saying to you is that a single counter-example is a big problem for the philosophical idea that life is competition.
And the counter examples are more than just one, because this extreme example was just to illustrate a general point about intelligent life. Plus the other example of very simple single-celled life.

I’m not trying to assert that all actions are about survival, but these actions we engage in come about because we have survived.

How could anything we do or know be passed on to us if the originators of that knowledge had not looked after our survival long enough for us to comprehend it then act on it? — Brett

I'm not really sure what you mean by this.

Let's say I am designing a quantum computer. What does this action have to do with my parents who had never (and probably still haven't) heard of such a thing?
What do their actions hooking up have to do with my actions, except very, very indirectly, in terms of instincts?

When an animal takes care of an infant from another species, would you call that "altruistic?" — 8livesleft

Yes possibly.

We can describe animal behaviours in two ways:

1. Why the behaviour evolved. What selective pressure resulting in this being a common behaviour?
2. What are the consequences of this action?

In terms of (1), the answer is always going to be selfish, because we're literally asking what are the survival benefits of the action. However, even here, note that it is not selfishness on the part of the individual. It's harmful to the individual to spend time and resources on helping others, even their own young.
But it's beneficial to their genes, or the group's genes, to have a parental instinct.

In terms of (2) we can just look at the outcome and say that the action benefitted the group at a cost to the individual: it's altruistic.
This might seem a bit anthropomorphic, and I may agree.
From my perspective, the important thing is that we're consistent. If we are willing to call certain animal actions "greedy" or "spiteful" say, then we can talk about other actions being altruistic. If we want to reserve such words only for intelligent life, that's OK -- then all should be off the table.

I presume that what you mean by this is that we don’t need to define something by one of its many properties. — Brett

Yes, exactly.

However it’s also an aberration, it’s the actions of an organism that cannot cope
[...]
I’d agree [that that is not competition]. But life did not remain that way. — Brett

This is a thread about what life is "all about".
You have phrased it as "life is competition"
You cannot simply handwave counter-examples.

Especially when one counter-example lasted billions of years, and the other applies to intelligent life (and much of the discussion in this thread has been about how humans should view their lives).

Just to reiterate my point; life may not be about competition but it is about survival. — Brett

Between you and I we were just discussing competition, but OK, being about survival is a more defensible position in my view.

I would still say intelligent life would be an exception though. Me, typing this comment, does nothing to aid my survival. We could say it is a side effect of so-and-so instinct that was for survival, but that would concede the point that right now my action is neither motivated by survival nor does it aid my survival.

Also, it's worth pointing out that the OP very much considered competition to be purely at an individual level, not the group. Whether we talk about "competition" or "survival" I think it is important to point out that it is also at the group level for many species. So a lot of the logic in this thread implying altruistic behaviours must really be for personally selfish reasons, doesn't follow. Behaviours like that can evolve because of benefits at the group level.

If we observe life in its many forms is there anything consistent in them? The guy on the space hopper, his actions tell us very little about him. But what if someone came and took the hopper off him by force? — Brett

I think with your allusion to consistency, what you're implicitly saying is that if all life competes, then the statement "life is competition" is validated.
However, in general when we have a set of things that share some property, we don't feel the need to expand the definition to include that property. If we found that all lemons are high in zinc, we don't need to define lemons as high in zinc. We don't have to say all lemons necessarily are high in zinc, just all the ones we've seen.

And in the case of life competing, it's not merely the case that we have no reason to include it in our definition, but actually, there are counter-examples already:

1) In the case of your question about our space hopper friend, what if he just kills himself, or spends the rest of his life trying to get his space hopper back? That would be an example of an organism not competing, no? Or is the suggestion that he (joking aside) no longer counts as life?
It's trivial to illustrate that humans break the notion of all individual organisms really being motivated by competition.

2) For most of Earth's history, the only life was single-celled and incapable of sexual reproduction.
They did not have any desire or ability to compete as such, but the environment favored certain mutations.
Now, if we count even that as competition, then we can apply this notion of competition to everything...

e.g. we can say that stars compete, since the environment favors certain stars to live longer and be more numerous than others.

Apart from this watering down the idea of competition too far, IMO, there's another more serious issue: When did we decide that it was a "Be the most numerous type of star" competition? Why not "Be the biggest" or "Be the brightest" or "Most metal rich" or "Most active" whatever?
It takes a subjective judgement to decide that, say, red dwarfs will one day have the highest population, therefore they're the bestest.

Sure, but what if you leave out “about”? “Life is competition”. — Brett

I would still consider that a subjective judgement.

Let's go back to the guy who wants to spend his life bouncing on a space hopper. If we look at this guy and say "life is competition", what is that telling us, what understanding does that help us to achieve? What empirical data backs that claim up?

If the point you're making requires that a circle is a polygon, and mathematicians do not consider a circle to be a polygon, then it really doesn't make your point, does it? — Metaphysician Undercover

The point is, the only reason it is not considered a polygon is because it breaks equations like that one.
The OP was saying that, since infinity breaks the speed equation then there cannot be an infinitely fast speed. However, using the same logic, there cannot be an infinitely-sided shape.

First of all, it's worth saying that life does not need to be "about" anything.

Sure, this is a philosophy forum and we can talk about what we think life is for, but we should keep in mind that that may simply be a value judgement that we are making.

More specifically in the case of humans, we can decide what our own life is for.
If I choose to dedicate my life to bouncing around on a space hopper, that's what my life is for.
I don't care if someone thinks life is about reproducing, or if that is the process that brought me into the world. I don't owe evolution anything, and I think my life is for bouncing.

However natural selection is not usurped by these observations. In fact the same selective forces can demonstrate how seemingly cooperative behaviour can develop from selfish individualistic desire to survive. I have more chance of success if I am seen to be in a large group where someone else may be eaten instead. — Benj96

But this is a poor example.
In other species the individual regularly sacrifices themselves for the group. Now, we could argue that it is kind of a group selfishness that results in such behaviours.
And that's true. But it still breaks the rest of the OP. Because, no, it doesn't follow that individuals must necessarily be really thinking selfishly.

I'm surprised that people thought the speed of light was not finite because it's relatively easy, using math alone, to prove that all speeds, light's included, has to be finite without doing any experiments at all. — TheMadFool

1) As Banno has pointed out, you can't do this. You can't use infinity as if it's a regular number.

Consider: there is an equation for calculating the sum of the angles of a polygon, and to do that you need to input the number of sides in the polygon: sum_of_angles = number_of_sides * 180

So, based on your logic, we can trivially prove that it's impossible to have a polygon with infinite sides. Because that would allow us to prove that 1 = 2 or whatever.

But we know that there's a polygon with infinite sides: a circle.
OK technically mathematicians do not consider a circle to be a polygon, but it's only for essentially this very reason; that the maths is simpler if we separately handle shapes with finite vs infinite sides. But apart from the number of sides there's clearly no qualitative difference between a hexagon, say, and a circle. Anyway, the main point is, having an equation that would be broken by inputting infinity doesn't tell us anything. All equations are broken by inputting infinity.

2) More specifically on the light speed issue, s = d / t can be considered a crude approximation to Einstein's relativistic equations, that only works for low values of s.

Einstein's equation includes Lorentz contraction and shows that at actual lightspeed, t is indeed zero, even though c is not infinite.

So, ironically, from a photon's eye view, all distances are the same, and part of the OP's premise for saying infinite light speed is impossible is true in reality, even though lightspeed is not infinite!

However, when we're talking about perspectives, it's pretty clear that there is no reason to say it is impossible. For example, a toy cow on my desk might look the same to me as a far away cow in a field. So what? There's no contradiction there.

3) Finally, speaking more empirically, it is possible to reason why light speed is finite.
In our reality, Ole Roemer figured out that lightspeed must be finite from studying the eclipses of Jupiter's moons. But, in a hypothetical reality where we had the equations for electricity and magnetism and still thought light moved infinitely fast, in a single reference frame, we'd find that our equations would tell us that electrical fields and magnets would create infinitely more of each other in a feedback loop.
(The specifics of this are beyond my mathematical ability, but I can link a video if you're interested. Apparently there are a few examples like this in physics, where an infinite light speed (or speed of causality), would break things physically, not just the math).

He presents a false dichotomy:
* Consciousness cannot be emulated by a Turing machine
* Therefore, it must be physical, not informational, and can only be reproduced with the right mechanical process.

But what if consciousness is informational, not physical, and is emergent from a certain processing of information? And what if that emergence doesn't happen if a Turing machine emulates that processing? — hypericin

Good point.
I need to give this more thought...does the Chinese room apply if consciousness is informational, but not Turing-compatible?
But at first glance it does appear that Searle made a claim there that goes beyond what the Chinese room actually demonstrates.

But there is a middle ground which Searle seems to overlook: Computional machines which are not turing machine, and yet is purely informational. Such a machine has no ties to the matter which instantiates it. And yet, it is not a Turing machine, it does not process symbols in order to simulate or emulate other computations. It embodies the computations. Just like us. — hypericin

Sure but I don't think your point is actually different to Searle's, or something he's overlooked.

Because firstly, yes, when he is talking about "computers" and "computation" he really has a narrow idea in mind of what that means. He means a turing-emulatable (probably) digital computer. If this seems a straw man, note that this is the same idea of "computer" that is usually in mind for areas of study like computational neuroscience, and so is a key part of the main theories that he is arguing against.

Now, if you're suggesting "What if there's a computer that's not Turing-compatible?" well sure there is, in Searle's view: the human brain. Because, if the human brain is not Turing-compatible, then it must be an example of a non-Turing compatible computer (a "hypercomputer") because humans are obviously capable of performing computation.

Finally, if your point is about the possibility of making a non-biological hypercomputer, well we don't know that right now. Searle himself speculates that it may well be possible by, if nothing else, copying the human brain.
But anyway, the point is, that the Chinese room is not intended to show that producing a hypercomputer is impossible, and Searle himself explicitly considered it out of scope.

Yes, that's right. According to the wiki:

Searle does not disagree with the notion that machines can have consciousness and understanding, because, as he writes, "we are precisely such machines".[5] Searle holds that the brain is, in fact, a machine, but that the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using machinery that is non-computational. If neuroscience is able to isolate the mechanical process that gives rise to consciousness, then Searle grants that it may be possible to create machines that have consciousness and understanding. — Wiki

The argument is just against certain computational theories of the mind, and he is just trying to show that:

1. A mind "program" is not necessarily itself a mind
2. We cannot infer from behaviour alone whether subjective states and understanding are taking place

Again, I'm not saying that the argument necessarily works. I think at this point even Searle has conceded that the original argument needs further refinement. Or, alternatively, that the argument is often applied way beyond its intended scope.

When people talk about "computers" within the context of strong AI, they usually mean Turing machines i.e. something which runs a program which can be run on any other Turing machine.
If strong AI is true, my PC can run a consciousness program (perhaps extremely slowly, but that's besides the point) and my PC would be conscious.

If we are just saying a computer is some machine that computes, and is not necessarily Turing complete, then sure, the Chinese room doesn't apply.
But Searle would agree with you. He agrees that the brain is a kind of machine, and would obviously agree that we are capable of computation. The Chinese room is not about trying to prove we have a soul or whatever, it's just about whether running a word-understanding program is the same thing as understanding words, which is relevant to whether running a consciousness program is the same thing as being conscious.

For this latter point, I am not saying that the argument necessarily works. I am just saying that the objection of the OP is possibly based on a misconception.

Once again, this kind of train of thought is more linguistic that ontological.

Consider that not all languages even have a word for "nothing"; many languages just have a word for logical negation, and a word for something. Most likely English was like this at some point, but eventually we contracted "no" and "thing" into a discrete noun.

But it's a special noun. If I say "There's nothing to be afraid of", I am not saying be afraid of one thing, that I am calling "nothing". I am saying logical-NOT( there is something to be afraid of )

A lot of the problem with the OP (and most of the other threads with the word "nothing" in the title) is in treating it as some discrete entity unto itself.

"the brain constructing images."
— Mijin

Every time a neuroscientist says "neural representation" without clarifying it as readiness to play a social game of agreeing actual representations, a dualist gets more confused. — bongo fury

You are quoting me from a different thread, and I think the context is important here (I was talking about optical illusions).

I've come to think that qualia are really too mysterious to be explained in physical terms. — Keith Frankish

So instead, he suggests that qualia are an illusion — Marchesk

So much of the discussion of the hard problem seems to be based on this flawed reasoning.
The fact that we cannot think of a physical model, is neither grounds to say qualia are non physical, nor that they are some kind of "illusion".

Yes. I'm aware that most physicists don't do metaphysics. But philosophers do. And this is a philosophical forum, is it not?. So, why not consider Metaphysical interpretations of Quantum Theory? — Gnomon

I'm not trying to shut the conversation down, I was replying specifically to posts about what physicists say and how physics is taught.

So, if physicists now think of particles as continuous waves in "fields" (wholes), why do some on this forum insist on referring to waves-in-an-empty-ocean as "parts" (particles)? — Gnomon

(Emphasis added)

I can't parse this question. Seems you are saying both groups are aware of wave particle duality but tend to have a preferred description. Even assuming you're right about that...I don't see any conflict or inconsistency.

Naturally, because prisons are unisex institutions, one begs the question, are we then as a society negatively selecting those physical (biochemical) or psychologically traits that led this person to behave as a criminal? — Benj96

Well, indirectly, yes. But largely as a side effect.
There are lots of other roles and responsibilities e.g. being drafted for war which have considerable impact too.

Finally, if prisons are in fact slowly reducing the pool of “aggressive” “impulsive” or “Psychopathic” or “violent” genes in the general population what is to be said for social selective pressures within the prison. — Benj96

Even if these traits are strongly genetic (there's no doubt that there's a genetic element, but things like being born into poverty and/or a difficult childhood seem to be better predictors), and even if the effect of prison is that violent offenders have fewer children (we'd also have to factor in how many children the average life sentence criminal already has), evolution is sloooow.

Talking about human evolution is largely a waste of in my opinion, because we're changing our environment so much quicker. The goalposts are moving much more quickly than evolution can keep up with.