• dimosthenis9
    837
    But logic and "search for truth" relentlessly pursuit by scientists (who indeed are similar to truth or logic engines, though luckily there are exceptions) and applied to Nature brings our physical, and all the live in it, to the brink of extinction. Many species have already been swiped away from the Earth's surface, people suffer from science-based technologyGraveItty

    I think we talk about different things here. Science use Logic of course, but aren't the same. Science itself isn't evil at all either but of course the use we make of some scientific achievements can bring evil indeed.

    Still no Logic's fault though. In fact it's the opposite. The use of science without Logic brings harm and evil.
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    There's a good paper by Friston (although very speculative, I should stress) on how this might come about.
    https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1399513/1/Friston_Journal_of_the_Royal_Society_Interface.pdf
    Isaac

    Heh, "Life as we know it" - not too ambitious, are we? ;) I heard Sean Carroll talk to Friston on his podcast about his free energy minimization model for cognition, mainly, but they touched upon his foray into OOL as well.
  • GraveItty
    311
    I think we talk about different things here. Science use Logic of course, but aren't the same. Science itself isn't evil at all either but of course the use we make of some scientific achievements can bring evil indeed.dimosthenis9

    I don't say there is a fault in logic. If people wanna think logically, why not? If they wanna arrange their lives accordingly, why not? But if this way of living becomes the standard for everyone and every creature on the planet, then I raise an eyebrow. You state that science itself is not evil. Of course knowing things does no harm. But science claims something else too. Something far more dangerous than just doing bad things. Most scientists claim to have the only possible right worldview, the one and only Truth so to speak. An idea started in ancient Greece (by Xenophanes and the likes). Now it's only natural to see your worldview as a true one, but science claims it's the only one. This attitude, together with science's bond with politics and economics, shows itself in the decline of non-western cultures (which can be very logical!) and the decline of Nature. Non-western beliefs, the soul, religion, etc. are being regarded as superstition. Once colorfull societies were simply wiped out of existence. Aboriginal children were taken away to "properly educate" them (and excuses always come after the deed). On top of that, knowledge about the physical world as produced by scientists can be used in a variety of ways. Especially in the realm of economics and politics, this leads to harm.
  • Isaac
    10.3k


    Indeed. I think Friston is a genius, and I don't use that word lightly, but in common with all geniuses, he doesn't know much about setting realistic targets!
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    Basically, the point I'm trying to get across is that predators need to be more intelligent than prey. Planet earth is a case in point -the most intelligent organism viz. humans are predatory, in fact they're the apex predator. Makes me wonder about the wisdom of the Arecibo Message, SETI, Voyager Golden Record. Are we sending out an invite for a gala feast, us on the menu?TheMadFool
    Yes. Technologically advanced aliens would presumably also be somewhat smarter in general. But it's not their intelligence that we need to look-out for -- it's their motives. Historically, when advanced humans invade a new territory, the inhabitants usually become extinct, or learn to survive as slaves. It's not only selfish predatory Genes though, but also the self-aggrandizing Memes, that disrupt the former balance of power. The conquistadors and colonizers were not primarily motivated by scientific exploration, but by the mandate for new resources to exploit.

    I wonder if a democratic society would be more peacefully scientific, and less aggressively predatory, than the old-fashioned autocratic civilizations. Kings & emperors were typically lauded for their predatory exploits as warriors, not for their concern for civil rights & infrastructure. Modern leaders of market-driven democracies, even including hybrid command economies like China, tend to be more in favor of cooperation than domination. Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, presented evidence that more technologically advanced societies are also more democratic and peaceful. I hope he's correct.

    Of course, we are still in a transition phase between the old insular tribal warring, and the we're-all-in-this-together global civilizations. I suspect that Carl Sagan, and his we-come-in-peace gold record, envisioned space-faring aliens as scientifically-motivated for cerebral knowledge, instead of predatorily-inclined to appease their visceral & power hunger. For example, more Star Trek than Star Wars. :smile:
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    But it's not their intelligence that we need to look-out for -- it's their motives.Gnomon

    I'd be more concerned with their diseases. Sorry for the digression, because I probably agree with your main point. It's just the unintended can be a real threat.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    I'd be more concerned with their diseases.James Riley
    True. But how could we convince a superior power to spend a month in quarantine, while we check them out.? Hopefully they will quarantine themselves, as humans do, by encapsulating themselves in spacesuits until safety is confirmed. That would be better for both of us. Many, if not most, early sci-fi movies portrayed invasive aliens as naked & unafraid. :joke:
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    We have a disagreement here on which are the best options for an analogy: you think it's the organisation of a business I think it's a matrix where the conscious part is imprisoned in the matrix and dosn't even understand what the matrix does or that there is one. Hoffmann chose a computer interface and hence computers to descibe this thoughts, and that is something that many people do today when they describe the mind. I think both the business hierahcy analogy and the computer analogy represent the heuristic bias: We tend to overjudge the value of the information we have/what is familiar to us and this distorts our thinking.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I have made my mind up this night and I stay with my original opinion.

    During the discussion somehow moral blured more and more into the background. It might be a central feature of logic that it is somehow nihilistic, so the longer one discuss "logically" the more moral blures. I have the feeling that the majority of people here (or at least a large number) don't believe it makes a difference if a thinking entity runs it's minds operation for example on donated energy like the computer or if that thinking entity runs it's entire operations by stealing life energy.

    I am absolutely sure that it does make a moral difference. Our brain has no choice here, and hence it is claimed to be not evil. I agree that it is not evil in the sene of choice but that makes it just intrinsically evil.

    However this is a personal opinion that I can not proof objectively. If I attack logic I can not use it to justify my own logic anymore. My opposition must be either due to a brain error, come from god or from my own subjective intuition.

    God as a source always raises strong suspicions so I will not discuss this. "Intuition" or "instincts" here as well seen as an inferrior source to logic. I don't agree to that. I once was in a situation where my logic told me; it's all fine, this are completely normal people in here, no one said or did anything evil while my intuition told me: "run for your life". Than my logic told me: "No evidence. You only have this feeling because you gotten paranoid." So I stayed. I count not running for my life at that day into the worst three decisions I ever made.

    What people don't understand is that the unconsciousness can handle more information in a given time slot than logic. Logic is really the thing that focus so hard it can't see the wood for all the trees. So facts about why this people where evil where propably all known to me on the subconscious level - I just could not connect the dots on the logic level.

    I read your quritique about science Gravellty and I must say that I start to have the first slight sensation of the "run for your life" instinct again when it comes to modern western life style. You are right, science is becoming the new unquestionable god and I wait for a new inquisition to show up to defend it.

    It short term success are undeniable. But what exactly does it give us in the long run? There is a Massai tribe, that is happier than the richest people on the Forbes list: https://www.forbes.com/2004/09/21/cx_mh_0921happiness.html?sh=c8ce61f13c1e

    The disastifcation level of non-rich people with the modern "rational" life style is high enough already, that one of our two primary surivival instincts is failing now (the reproductive instinct). It has to be noted that especially in countries with high atheism the birth rate is fare below the death rate. South Koreas population is projected to reach zero in about 800 years. In our time standards this sounds slow but in evolutionary standards that is close to light speed. Happy as the Massai? Certainly not.

    I furthermore see that many of my higher qualified friends seem to get more and more nervous. There is this genetic engineer who started his career by doing medical research but is now offering advice on bioweapons. There are my two coder friends who's favourite subject has become how to stop surveillance technology of the style China is currently developing.

    My personal nightmare is the achievment of immortality by medical means or through transhumanism. It totaly escapes the proponents of this ideas that this opens up the possibility of beeing tortured forever. What the effect will be on our moral, our will to counter injustice and hence our political systems - I am sure that this will go wrong.

    I don't say that this is a reason to abadon science alltogether but the feelings and intuitions of people about it should be taken more serious, it must be respected when they don't want to rush into this. It is true that especiallys some religious ideas delay technological progress. But by that they might be delaying the moment too, where we are trapped in the ultimate surveillance state, controlled by face recognizing drones and tortured forever, when the ruler does not like us.

    Another reason why I stand to my own opinion, even if it is unpopular is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjP22DpYYh8

    However despite all this gloom there was one insight that made me really laugh during the discussion too: our understanding of the universe ends exactly where it is predicted to end! The brain just needs to know how to get energy to survive and not to know what energy exactly is. And the axioms of our modern physics end exactly there: with energy and matter. We know what they do, and this is how we describe them but we don't know what they are.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I am pretty sure that your table does not exist in a propability cloud just because it's legs extend to several locations.
  • GraveItty
    311
    I have made my mind up this night and I stay with my original opinion.FalseIdentity

    Which was? Sorry, I just woke up! Nice last comment. Gave me an early laugh! :smile:

    Ah there is more! Sorry, just woke up! What's the big deal with science here? It seems everyone here is it's obedient slave and bows to it in awe!
  • GraveItty
    311
    I have the feeling that the majority of people here (or at least a large number) don't believe it makes a difference if a thinking entity runs it's minds operation for example on donated energy like the computer or if that thinking entity runs it's entire operations by stealing life energy.FalseIdentity

    You mean sitting behind the computer all day or taking the dog for a walk? What on Earth is a "thinking entity"? You mean people or animals?
  • litewave
    797
    I am pretty sure that your table does not exist in a propability cloud just because it's legs extend to several locations.FalseIdentity

    Yeah, the probability cloud is pretty much suppressed in macroscopic (many-particle) objects. Still, the probability cloud is a logically consistent object.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    If you say so. And it is certainly compatible with the laws of logic that one and the same particle can hold two oposing spins at the same time, and that a particle can be a wave and an object at the same time. Litewave, there is stuff in this universe that simply violates logic, we call it paradoxa. If you try to explain paradoxa away you close an important opportunity to understand logic better. Because understanding the limits of something can usually tell you a lot about the properties of that something. In engineering you for example want to run an engine at it's limits to see where the real problems lie.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I should have said "entity that can solve problems" not entity that has a mind :)
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    My original opinion is that human logic has something evil to it and that I don not fully trust it. If you don't like the word evil for historic reasons call it destructive.
  • litewave
    797


    Not everything that seems weird to you is logically contradictory. The law of non-contradiction states that "contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction) I have underlined the "in the same sense at the same time" part because it is critical for understanding what a contradiction is. When I say that an object looks like a circle from one perspective and like a square from another perspective, this is not a contradiction because there are two different senses in which the object looks (two different perspectives). The object may be a cylinder. (It is not a "square circle".)

    In quantum mechanics, a small object like an electron is a probability wave (cloud) extended in space when it has not interacted with a macroscopic object, and it is a "pinpoint" particle when it has interacted with a macroscopic object. Again, there is a difference in senses (and in times, but "times" may be subsumed under the meaning of "senses"), so no contradiction. Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics says that an electron is both a particle and a wave at the same time, but even here there is not necessarily a contradiction because the electron can be seen as a collection of a particle and a wave, so the particle and the wave are not one object but two different objects, and their collection is a third object that we can call electron.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I can imagine how a cylinder looks like a square when seen from fare away but I can not imagine how a quantum wave looks like a particle by any manipulation of my mind. Means unlike the cylinder example my mind can not take a perspective even in theory where I can see how a wave function "looks". Remember that this is not about quantum physics beeing untrue but about our logic not beeing able to understand it, and what that might tell us about said logic. Furthermore a logic conclusion should not depend on if or if not an observer has interacted with an object. In theory you should be able to make a logic conclusion by modelling the problem in your mind and that would be independent from the actual interaction. The Bohmian pilote wave has so low popularity because it requires faster than light signaling and hence backward causality. You might have solved one logic problem, by introducing it, but you created the next logic problem; I can not imagine anything that messes logic more seriously than the thought of backward causality.

    It was an invitation. Some centuries ago everyone thought that apples falling to the ground is just how nature worked and not a sign of anything special. Than someone had a hinge that this might require some deeper investigation. You just take the working and laws of your logics as a given, in the same way people take it for a given that apples fall to the ground: no further explanation required, it's just how nature is. This precludes you from learning anything deeper about the human mind. In case there is nothing deeper about the relation between mind and physics this saves you a lot of time, good for you. In case there is you completely block yourself from discovering it. I give up at this point because I see I can not arise the same sense of wonder in you that the unimaginability of the quantum world rises in me. To you it looks as trivial as cylinders, to me not. I want to understand why I can't imagine that.

    P.S. I don't see it as usefull that either I convince you to change your position nor that you change my position. Pluralism is better for the progress of science than lemming--thinking. Follow ideas like the pilote wave theory, one does not know where it might carry you. I follow my feeling that I can learn more about logic when I see paradoxes as a real problem.
  • GraveItty
    311
    My original opinion is that human logic has something evil to it and that I don not fully trust it. If you don't like the word evil for historic reasons call it destructive.FalseIdentity

    If you mean by "logic" "problem solving" then I don't see why it's evil or bad. Though people can use it in a bad way. I have had discussions with physicists who merely use their ability to solve problems to show of their ability to solve problems merely to show of and feeling superior to others. They are in general quite dumb people with no real interest in physics, talk like parrots, and behave like robots. They don't have too much imagination and have found their place in the system. Somehow I feel evil in these kind of physicists.

    From child on we are trained in problem solving and there are all kinds of logical formal systems (math, proposition logic, or whatever abstract problem solving strategy) let loose to enter the minds of the sweet child in time. From being playful, colorful, spontaneous human beings they are turned into serious, grey, programmed creatures. Nothing wrong with being like that, but it's forced upon us. Children are obliged to go to school. Science embraces problem-solving and knowledge-gathering. Ad nauseam. In the process of logic, destruction takes place in the name of science. Logic can have destructive outcomes if relentlessly applied or forced upon us by politics. This eagerness to know and investigate is a nice human quality. Like problem solving. It has always been strange in my eyes that for examining the smallest the biggest experimental equipment ever was built (luckily the 6-billion SSC was called of, although Lederman and the likes of course hammered on its "importance" while in fact it's not needed at all to look deeper because you can imagine the subject matter too, without disturbing the world or measuring whatever). How many Nature was destroyed because of this? A considerable piece, including underground. A formal and abstract system of logic can be applied to every worldview or culture besides the scientific view (constricting the sciences in a strangling way though, like sir Popper and the likes try(tried)) and forcing it, together with science itself, upon these cultures has been performed very efficiently and with power given by science-based weapons. It's the never-ending tendency of science to solve problems and investigate which causes Natural destruction. On top of this is the application in economy. Also there inflation (like in the sciences!) rules suppreme. With all destructive consequences (besides the destruction involved in the knowledge-gathering an Sich). Logic can be nice. So can be science. It can do evil, destruct, and constrict, like the so-called scientific method, and even the most logic formal system (mathematics) do (though in science the last is used in almost every area of it). It can do harm to Nature and other cultures. The people using and applying it, that is. Logic and science are human enterprises, with a base in the old Greek philosophers like Xenophanes (from who the now common western belief stems that there can only be one objective reality, which he expressed as his only super monster-god, like the one in Christianity or Islam, from which many science developed too; as opposed to the many ones on the Olympos), Plato, or Aristotle. What a difference between them and their present day descendents though! Like the difference between a sweet-smelling colored flower in the rain forrest and a plastic dull one in a designer vase (the last brings to mind, I don't know why, that despite all individuality of present day, there is a kind of uniformity in mankind as humanity has never faced before).

    So. Is logic evil? Is it destructive? The last yes. It destroys the outer physical world as well as the full inner potential. Now, the destruction of the natural world isn't evil necessarily. But what about all kinds of experiments done on living creatures to gather knowledge in the name of science (and usually the link to medicin is made to justify it) and problem-solving in relation to it? What about the logic of Popper, Kuhn, Radder, Lakatos, who all try to rationalize, methodize, formalize, or standarize, the sciences, try to put it in an abstract formal system? Now math does that too but it's a part of many sciences (though it can be quite constricting to them too). Don't they (wannabe scientists?) restrict the sciences and their progress? Don't they destroy the process of evolving science if scientists would conform to their measures? I think this is so.
    Of course logic can't be bad or evil. Neither good or halo-wearing. It's very restrictive though. Strangling even. It kills human qualities present besides problem-solving or non-logical qualities involved in that "solving". It causes misery in nature (which we try to "solve" by logic and science that caused it in the first place!).

    Can you give an example of the destructive power of logic? What do you mean, by the way, by "stolen life energy" and "donated energy"? Brain electric potentials and external voltage supplies?
  • litewave
    797
    I can imagine how a cylinder looks like a square when seen from fare away but I can not imagine how a quantum wave looks like a particle by any manipulation of my mind.FalseIdentity

    A quantum wave doesn't look like a particle. In Bohm interpretation the wave and the particle are two different objects, but you're right that the Bohm interpretation is not popular because it requires faster-than-light signalling, which messes up the well-tested theory of relativity. The most popular interpretations of QM among physicists seem to be many-worlds and Copenhagen. According to Copenhagen, when the quantum wave interacts with a macroscopic (many-particle) object, the wave collapses into a particle, maybe somewhat like when a baloon bursts and only a small speck of it remains. According to many-worlds, when the quantum wave interacts with a macroscopic object, the wave splits into many non-interacting worlds, so that only a small part of it (a particle) remains in each world; in each world it looks as if the wave collapsed like the Copenhagen says. The collapse or splitting of the wave is caused by the barrage of particles from the macroscopic object the wave comes into contact with (a process called decoherence).

    You just take the working and laws of your logics as a given, in the same way people take it for a given that apples fall to the ground: no further explanation required, it's just how nature is.FalseIdentity

    Yeah I take it as a given that A=A and I don't see why it would need explaining.
  • dclements
    498
    I start to have a bad consciouness to bring up my health. One must say too that it is still not certain that I die but several health problems combine in an unfunny way. I am very happy that so many people here give me empathy but it completely crashes the subject of the conversation :) I am very interested in evolution (especially the evolution of primates) but I am actually a believer. I am open in how I imagine god, I consider both classical theist and pantheist options possible. However in both cases death itself is nothing I fear. As you see I am unhappy with my predature nature and death is the only option to finally exchange it against something truly new.FalseIdentity
    I'm sorry that I have not posted in the last few days as my other obligations have kept me from being able to visit the forum.

    IMHO I do not believe there is a God (or at least the type of God talked about in Abrahamic religions) and therefore i belief it is likely we cease to exist when we are no longer alive. Part of the reason is that I doubt that a "good"/all knowing/all powerful would create the type of world we like in. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if there isn't a God to save us when we pass from this world then maybe it might be in your best interest to extend the life that you have if there isn't one after this one. Of course that is dependent on "IF" you would really want to still live in this world if there isn't any other one after this one.

    If I had a choose and money wasn't a issue I would try to live on since I believe this existence is better than non-existence and I don't believe any religions that say that God will provide us with life after we leave this world. However this is just my opinion on the subject.
  • Cabbage Farmer
    301
    A new discovery in the science of evolution has shown that a logic developed through evolution will never seek to understand the truth, it just learns to maipulate it's environment without a deeper understanding of what it is manipulating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY&t=997s [...] (I strongly reccomend watching the video in the link to understand this better)FalseIdentity
    I recommend you take another glance at the Donald Hoffman TedTalk you linked to, or perhaps read the transcript. Hoffman isn't talking about logic -- where did you get that from? He's talking about perception. And despite his misleading rhetoric, he doesn't say we have no grasp on truth. In fact he leans the other way when prompted to clarify, at 20:24 in the video, in response to a remark from Chris Anderson.

    So you think it's possible -- (Laughter) -- This is cool, but what you're saying I think is it's possible that evolution can still get you to reason. — Chris Anderson

    Yes. Now that's a very, very good point. The evolutionary game simulations that I showed were specifically about perception, and they do show that our perceptions have been shaped not to show us reality as it is, but that does not mean the same thing about our logic or mathematics. We haven't done these simulations, but my bet is that we'll find that there are some selection pressures for our logic and our mathematics to be at least in the direction of truth. I mean, if you're like me, math and logic is not easy. We don't get it all right, but at least the selection pressures are not uniformly away from true math and logic. So I think that we'll find that we have to look at each cognitive faculty one at a time and see what evolution does to it. What's true about perception may not be true about math and logic. — Donald Hoffman (my emphasis)
    It's not a startling discovery of 21st-century science that perceptual judgment is not in general immediately veridical. The fallibility of perceptual judgment is one of the oldest tropes in the history of philosophy. Progress in empirical knowledge depends on rigorous collection and analysis of observational judgments -- in the "direction of truth" that Hoffman acknowledges, when pressed, in the passage I've just quoted.

    It's not clear to me what conception of "reality" he thinks he's overturning -- whose belief "that spacetime and objects are the nature of reality as it is". It sounds to me like he's recognized the conceptual shortcomings of some philosophically naive materialism -- perhaps one that he once took for granted himself -- and now he's wide-eyed at all the "possibilities". If that's so, then I'd consider his fuzzy exuberance in this public-facing talk, along with Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, as another symptom of the intellectual confusion attendant upon academic philosophy's recoiling from a century of immoderate scientism.

    I'm sure there's some interesting scientific models hidden beneath his vaguely suggestive discourse. But on the surface that discourse is indistinguishable from the snake-oil pitch of a pseudoscientific charlatan. Unless you can point me to a more responsibly formulated presentation of his considered view, I wouldn't give it a second thought.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I apologize for having shown ethusiasm for the ideas of someone else, enthusiasm is the true mark of the stupid, I realize that now. Whoever is not "for" some idea can't be proofen wrong, because he is not making a positive claim. To answer your question: There are videos of Hoffmann which are more mathematical and present more detail on youtube, but I am only a human. After a day of negativism from almost everyone I met (Yes, outside of this discussion people hate enthusiasm too, this even extend to unexpexted areas like d&d) I opt for not thinking anymore. Whoever does not think can't make any thinking errors and hence can't be attacked. By the way I have run into many people recently who don't think anymore or at least nothing original. I slowly realize why their mind died. Now searching up the more scientific youtube videos of Hoffmann would require me to think but a dead mind can't do that, sorry. I wish you a good evening nevertheless. You are a very well educated person, I am sure that if you find "ethusiasm" for the subject of the limits of logic and perception (I thinks it's a typical error of reductionism to want to seperate both) you will make progress on your own. Unless of course your enthusiasm was killed by the constant toxity of social media too. Who knows? I am offline.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    No problem! When I was young I was an atheist too. However one interesting outcome of this discussion was that an evolved logic would not be capable to distinguish between good and evil. If it's not possible to understand what evil is than the problem of evil can not be used as counter proof against god. I neither believe that there is such a thing as an innocent creature (I just think that there are some creatures who have less opportunity to show their intrinsic agression for example because they die young) nor do I think that a god needs to be necessarily all powerfull. That was rather an idea of Augustinus and not present in the early jewish religion. But it's the most empathic people who struggle the strongest with the problem of evil and I hence think this is the most honourable cause to not believe in god.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    ↪Gnomon
    We have a disagreement here on which are the best options for an analogy: you think it's the organisation of a business I think it's a matrix where the conscious part is imprisoned in the matrix and dosn't even understand what the matrix does or that there is one.
    FalseIdentity
    I apologize for reminding you that The Matrix movie, like Hoffman's thesis, was also based on a computer metaphor. But perhaps, it seemed more realistic, because the fake-reality program's sub-routines had human faces, instead of abstract icons. Anyway, you are welcome to whatever "analogy" has personal meaning for you. I happen to prefer smiley-face icons, instead of evil icons. :smile: :naughty:
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    Yes you are right, that is a computer analogy too :) The deeper problem with the "heuristic bias" is that the consciousness is so different from any object that surounds us, that propably all analogies from our everyday life are misleading, mine, yours, everyones. I hoped by poking everyone a bit this would bring me and them to new ideas, and than maybe the magic: "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" thing might be happening. It's a fact that a group if it works well together can easily beat a person of higher intelligence. The propblem is that humans rarely can work well together if they are not extremely good friends. In all other contexts competition take over and this is why I doubt that anything new, anything in the sense of a synthesis will come from the overall discussion in this threat. I don't want to blame that on the others" alone, I am subject to the same faults. But when wachting society as a whole I have the eerie instinct that our social skills are declining (and the ability to focus for prolonged time is declining too) and that this must be conneced to to much verbal fighting. More and more people I see retreat socially and trust only a very small number of friends. Attempts to make more contacts mostly end in fighting, injury and biterness. If we would give up the idea that our mind can be neutral or that we are fighting just for "the truth" in such disputes like this one we might be able to understand why our societies implode in this way and prevent it. With so much of the young people becoming depressed we are sitting on a time bomb; socially and economically.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    You said that one can proof that logic discovers the truth by the success of science. I don't deny that. But just because logic can solve problems which are related to survival questions - and that is what science in my eyes is doing it's solving survival questions - this does not mean it can solve non-survival related questions. I answered that when describing how a neural network is trained: it is trained to solve a special task; and it can not solve other tasks equally well. For example if you train a neural network for speech recognition it will not be able to do image recognition. If you train a network for survival it would only be by accident be able to answer different questions than it was trained for. That some questions in philosophy and science are unsolvable or can be only answered by taking certain axioms as a given points to the limits of what this network can achieve.

    A key error many people make is to think: science has solved questions in the past so it will solve all questions if it is given enough time. In science no one would make a prediction about the past based solely on an emprical trend. What you need in addition is a model to explain why this trend happend in the first place and why it should continue into the future. In this case you have to do a model of how the brain really works to explain the trend that some questions have been solved. I don't know how the brain really works but if it works like an artifical neural network in a computer it can not solve tasks it was not trained for.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k
    You said that one can proof that logic discovers the truth by the success of scienceFalseIdentity
    I don't quite understand the phrase "by the success of science". Also, I didn't mention anything about "proving" anything or about what you are conveying here.. More specifically, I said that "Logic, combined with data (evidence) and experiment is how science comes up with new discoveries", and "It is itself used to establish truths", not discover truths. Truths cannot be discovered. As facts can't either.

    this does not mean it can solve non-survival related questionsFalseIdentity
    I didn't say or mean anything like that or even closely. More specifically, The only thing I said about survivel is "I wonder how

    ***

    Thank you for getting into the trouble of replying to me. But, I am not sure if this reply should be actually addressed to me or to someone else, since I don't recognize the things you have brought up here as being said by myself.

    To avoid misunderstandings, in general, please use the "Quote" feature, or copy-paste a text using quotes --as I did myself here-- to quote exactly what other people say.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    More and more people I see retreat socially and trust only a very small number of friends. Attempts to make more contacts mostly end in fighting, injury and biterness. If we would give up the idea that our mind can be neutral or that we are fighting just for "the truth" in such disputes like this one we might be able to understand why our societies implode in this way and prevent it.FalseIdentity
    Our times do indeed seem, at least in politics & fake news, to be devolving into cynicism, bitterness, & apocalyptic thinking. For example, many blockbuster movies in recent years seem to be built upon apocalyptic themes (e.g. Zombie Apocalypse).

    But then, there's nothing new about that. History, as Hegel noted, tends to swing up & down, back & forth, toward positive (optimistic) or negative (pessimistic) extremes. At the low points of negativity (antithesis), people cry-out that "the end is near". But, eventually a new synthesis becomes dominant, and optimism reigns for a while. All I can say, based on historical dialectic is, "stay tuned, it can only get better". :smile:

    PS__as an introvert, I am always in social retreat. But that's just my individual personality quirk. And I'm quite comfortable in my little hermit hole. But it doesn't mean that I am also, anti-social, pessimistic, or bitter. On this forum, I am often challenged to defend my Pollyannaish optimism. But I merely think of it as being realistic about the overall progressive trend of the world as a whole. :starstruck:


    Apocalyptic Thinking :
    The end is always nigh in the human mind
    https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028156-300-the-end-is-always-nigh-in-the-human-mind/

    The end is near :
    An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”
    https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/
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