2. Early Christians were willing to die for their belief in the content of the New Testament — Brendan Golledge

Perhaps that is mostly a matter of folklore.

https://www.bartehrman.com/how-did-the-apostles-die/

:up:

Although we might doubt that we exhaustively know what it is to be human. — Janus

I'd say that's a pretty reasonable doubt. :wink:

I think there are many things all of us take on faith because it seems more beautiful to do so. It makes life seem more human. — Janus

Or to provides a way to avoid facing, what it is to be human.

In particular, there is the question as to whether the mind is a 'blank slate', as suggested by John Locke and Stephen Pinker. — Jack Cummins

Pinker's book, The Blank Slate, explicitly argues against the notion of a blank slate.

If there's anything resembling intellectual integrity in there... — flannel jesus

Still hopeful are you?

Craig's view is incoherent... — Walter

You weren't expecting me to argue against that, were you? :wink:

Oh, I see - you just wanted to join in the kick fest. — Banno

What I was hoping for, was that Corvus would recognize his lack of insight into logic, and engage in error correction with regard to his thinking. Unfortunately he doubled down on speaking as if he was some sort of expert on the subject, while repeatedly demonstrating that he didn't know what he was talking about.

Here's a seperate point, made by Corvus, Beverly and myself, and pretty much unaddressed by others: It has not been shown that the Cogito is valid. — Banno

The invalidity of the Cogito hasn't been a factor in my involvement in the discussion. My involvement has been out of curiosity as to whether Corvus could admit to having been a doofus.

Newton's account was non-scientific or non-naturalistic insofar as it disregarded the prevalent canons of scientific reason. — Leontiskos

I'd say it's quite scientific, to recognize new and better ways of understanding things. Casting Newton as non-scientific seems rather bizarre to me.

so can reason itself explained in terms of 'natural laws'? — Wayfarer

It's looking ever more likely to me, that the answer is, "Yes."

Interestingly, there are a preponderance of congenitally blind people with autism. — Joshs

Interesting (and discussed somewhat in the Psychology Today article FJ linked).

Although I seem to have fairly normal vision when it comes to static images, I definitely have a deficit when it comes to detecting the details in dynamic visual events. (Some relevant research.)

So it's perhaps reasonable to think of people on the autism spectrum as being somewhat blind, in the sense of having lower visual processing bandwidth than neurotypicals.

In this way, a virtual form of high-level, reflective cognition gets bootstrapped from the basic, dumb mechanism of pattern recognition. The model doesn't just represent objective facts about the world, but also incorporates a model of itself as a rational subject navigating the space of reasons. It builds an implicit capacity for self-critique and error correction into its own functioning. — Claude

I didn't read much of the last two dialogs, but jumped to the end and saw that. Impressive.

I do not blame you at all. I would have bowed out much sooner! You lasted for pages without agreement from anyone but didn't give in. I am really impressed! — Beverley

Are you equally impressed with flat-earthers who persist in arguing for a flat earth?

All, can you see that the Cogito does not provide the certainty you crave? — Banno

I can see that's a loaded question. :wink:

If this persons truth-discovering tools like reason and logic are compromised in such a way, how could this person *discover the truth* that his truth-discovering (or filtering instead of discovering, if you prefer) tools are compromised and unrelaible? — flannel jesus

For someone who seriously wants to look into it, there are tests like the WAIS which can yield more fine grained knowledge of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

Do you have a link and timestamp to the YouTube video, or a quote from Craig? We need more than hearsay. — Leontiskos

Try this:

I want to suggest that we think of eternity, like the singularity, as the boundary of time. God is causally prior, but not chronologically prior, to the universe. His changeless, timeless, eternal state is the boundary of time, at which He exists without the universe, and at the moment of creation God enters into time in virtue of His real relation to the created order and His knowledge of tensed facts, so that God is timeless without creation and temporal subsequent to creation. — William Lane Craig

But I do genuinely believe that humans are hardwired to live in cults. This is most of our social organization. — Brendan Golledge

Why "Cults" rather than "relatively small social bands"?

Pan troglodytes (chimpanzees), Pan paniscus (bonobos), Gorilla beringei, Gorilla gorilla, and Homo sapiens are related species hardwired for life in relatively small social bands.

Comment - this possibility high-lights for me a question about Bostrom's first two hypotheses. They seem to me to be empirical. But I don't see how one could ever demonstrate that they are true or even plausible without some sort of evidence. Without that one could never demonstrate any consequence of them as sound, as opposed to valid. En masse simulations could provide such evidence. — Ludwig V

The second premise - any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof) - seems obviously true to me.

To be clear, I am looking at the issue in terms of something like modelling at least a significant subsection of the world (say a solar system) in terms of subatomic particles, while needing to make use of subatomic particles in creating the simulation.

The simulator would need to consist of more particles than the system which is being simulated. That's a rather fundamental problem. In practice, only things that are simpler than the simulator (or things treated simplistically) can be simulated.

It seems to me that the person who would seek to disprove the second premise would need to prove that consciousness can arise in a simulation of something much more simplistic than the world we find ourselves in, or that it will be a routine matter for a post-human civilization to take all of the matter in a big solar system, and use it to model a smaller solar systems.

Fully agreed — flannel jesus

:lol:

Sounds very sensible as far as a single enterprise goes, and might even give the participants greater confidence to tackle inequalities on the political front. — Vera Mont

Although I have worked at the same place for 32 years now, I can't say I am in a position to know whether it gives many greater confidence to tackle inequalities.

I'd speculate that I and my long term co-workers might tend to be less empathetic because we don't have experience with dealing with a lot of the crap I hear others talk about.

Also, we do get propagandized with a fair amount of ESOP cheerleading, so I don't have a basis for a very objective opinion.

Is this you confirming that you won't post the pictures if they don't confirm your beliefs? I truly hope that you can be better than that — flannel jesus

It can be helpful to understand that some posters post seeking narcissistic supply, and admitting having been wrong is never part of that 'plan'. In such cases, it's good to be able to recognize that one has made a mistake oneself, in thinking that one is dealing with a reasonable person.

You obviously don't even understand what the core problem is. The core problem is proving "Cogito ergo sum" is correct or incorrect.

It shows you are also one of the copy-paste internet info without even knowing what it is, but not even knowing what we are trying to prove here. — Corvus

I'm afraid you have shown the core problem here to be your misunderstanding of logic. There is no sense in discussing proving something with you when you can't distinguish formal fallacies from valid logic.

Now it give me an impression FJ is a robot machine set up for keep replying automatically without even knowing what it is talking about. :roll: :chin: — Corvus

Because you being wrong is inconceivable?

Can anyone think of alternative arrangements that might work better? — Vera Mont

I work for an employee owned company, where all of the employees benefits from the company doing well. There are a lot of benefits to work being a place where my fellow employees and I are working for each other's well being.

Hell, I don't even want him to admit that. — flannel jesus

Admitting it to us is of little consequence. Ability to admit it to himself could be hugely consequential for him.

You can choose bravery at any moment. — flannel jesus

Not to mention increase his competence at using logic. All for the low low price of admitting to having been a doofus.

Fascinating stuff.

Hey Bill,

How have you been?

It seems though that I am not alone in this belief, that we cannot know things. — Chet Hawkins

You are not alone, but you are apparently in the unfortunate situation of never having developed expertise of much significance.

For me, knowing things plays a huge role in paying the bills. Knowing that other people know things is immensely helpful as well.

After all if you presume to know you would stop trying to know. — Chet Hawkins

Well, I'm living proof that you are wrong about that. Trying to know reveals that there is so much more that might be known, than one could possibly get around to. All the more reason to keep learning.

But I'm guessing learning from others really isn't your thing.

If you throw doubt upon my assertion, I am rather allowed to throw doubt on yours. What are we left with? Belief only. That is the point, MY point. — Chet Hawkins

I understand that all you have is beliefs. (Or at least you are into thinking so.)

Me? I'm left with all sorts of evidence. Not to mention internet access to a society where a lot of people have looked into things that I haven't looked at the evidence for, and therefore know things that I don't.

I suspect it might be a language issue - maybe he's struggling with what "therefore" means or something like that. — flannel jesus

That is my impressiom. He mentioned "cause" earlier. My impression is he is confusing a statement about logical entailment for a statement about causality.

For example, the ground of moral virtue has to do with interacting with other people. Such a thing simply does not occur in the experience machine.

I'm simply not sure that this is a key distinction in these authors, particularly not in the Consolation itself. Virtue often seems to be defined almost entirely internally. Aristotle does make some nods to consequentialism in terms of deciding if an action is freely chosen in the Ethics, and he has an idea of negligence in there, but overall virtue is largely about how the person responds to the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To put a more modern spin on it, for people with neurology like ours, deep learning that arises from time spent engaged in interacting with and learning from and about other people, plays a role in one's ability to do good for other people. So a relevant question would be, do the people' in the simulation serve as a realistic training set, for the development of such deep learning, when it comes to the people in our world?

Has anyone here read Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad?

Much earlier than Bostrom, and if not the best, at least the funniest thinking on such topics.

I have to say, if these beings are to be conscious, I wish you luck in getting your project through your research ethics committee. — Ludwig V

:up:

Copy-paste examples. — baker

Not worth my time. But you can look for all the times when people here have responded to you dismissively, and look at what you wrote that led to such a response.

You think whatever I say that you think.
You feel whatever I say that you feel.
You did whatever I say that you did.
Your intentions are whatever I say that your intentions are.

Listen to pretty much any scientist, and this is what they are telling you, directly, or at best less directly. — baker

The irony of you projecting your own behavior on scientists...

:roll:

Is having a conscience a problem? I suppose it could be if it became uncontrollable and developed into a mental health issue. — Beverley

Scrupulosity is a somewhat relevant mental health issue.

I wonder if everyone has a conscience though, but people choose to suppress it...

In cases of psychopathy I don't get the impression that there is any conscience there to suppress.

...idc. — AmadeusD

Perhaps someday?

As i say, not trivialising - but to reverse the mode of the above response, I think this may be uniquely you. Most aren't strong enough in their personality to allow for this actualisation while under the influence of an in-group (particularly one that feels somehow victimized). — AmadeusD

That sure sounds like trivializing folk psychology to me.