Actually general relativity has been demonstrated to be extremely limited. It is not applicable at the very small scale, quantum level, and it is not applicable at the very large scale where the existence of dark matter is called for. It has a very narrow range of applicability which is closely limited to the human sphere of spatial-temporal activity. Since we are human beings, living in that very narrow spatial-temporal zone of activity, the theory is very useful to us. But since the applicability of the theory is limited to this very narrow range, we can be sure that it does not provide a true representation. — Metaphysician Undercover

General relativity actually can be applied to the quantum scale and directly leads, in combination with quantum fields, to Hawking radiation. The virtual particles around a black hole are real particles as seen from far away because of the equivalence principle. In the context of dark matter it can come to the rescue with primordial black holes being the dark constituent. Newtonian spacetime is a logical chimera in the context of general relativity, regardless of the successful quantitative application of Newtonian mechanics in the astronomical domain. Mass, cause, and effect don't make sense in an absolute spacetime. If the speed of light is infinite (as in Newtonian spacetime), everything happens at the same time, no cause and effect, and no mass would exist. Events would all be concentrated into one space and timeless event. "Kaboom!" The whole universum arisen, passed, and ended at once. Which obviously not the case. Little did Newton know... By which I don't wanna belittle his contribution, though it withheld science from (understanding) knowledge a couple of centuries.

Anyway, in my view, the notion of causality is an outmoded physicalist way of modeling the universe that simply refers to repeatable sequences of events that are actually computed instead of caused in any physical mechanistic sense. At this point I'll probably turn my attention to another thread. Thanks guys for the interesting discussion! — Edgar L Owen

Then the question pops up: what computes? In a sense I think you're right. I think the gods calculated how the particles should behave in order for life to emerge.

Another intractable problem with determinism is it implies a block time/block universe theory in which everything is predetermined in advance of it happening. How, pray tell, is a causally determined universe created prior to the actual causality that creates it? See the problem? — Edgar L Owen

Why it implies a block universe? That's what we project on it. Rigid iron world lines with motors in them pulling all particles along in the predetermined, preconstructed rails in a static universe. This image though denies the particles their own determination. I don't feel I'm pulled along worldlines.

In reality objective existence is not viewd on, has no perspective, no focus, is without POV, without an angle.
— Haglund

But that statement certainly is. Namely, a sophomoric, silly perspective. Which happens to be complete nonsense. — Xtrix

Then so be it... Better than having a so-called adult take on existence. Which is just another view. Existence exists. But existence is human or creature bound.

But there wasn't ever nothing. There was a god, if you claim that one of these properties of god is being eternal, but if not then how did god come from nothing? How does something come from nothing? You see, this is what happens every time I engage with the religious. Nothing but mental gymnastics that end up collapsing in on themselves without having said anything constructive, reasonable or understandable. — Harry Hindu

There never was nothing. The gods are eternal. But they created the universe outa nothing. It wasn't there and the next moment it was there. The spoke the word, the logos, so to speak. "Let the be particles and spacetime!", and there it was. So its all there for a reason and not because of some scientific theory, though that does a good job in describing.

I can tell you exactly what happened before the big bang and before that one, and after the current one, and offer mechanisms, but the very existence of these mechanisms can't be explained by a mechanism. Call it the Gödel theorem for physical laws. Only gods can complete it.

Yes. The Bell tests. Bell invented them as he was an advocate of hidden variables (he couldn't imagine an observer, an experimenter with knowledge of QM) to cause collapse of the wavefunction in the past. The test doesn't rule out non-local HV, only local ones. And the non-local ones are needed to explain entanglement and global collapse of the wavefunction.

How is it different? — Harry Hindu

Gods can create a universe out of nothing. They are like magicians pulling things out of a hat. For real, that is. There is no material cause preceding it (the universe). They could have done this an infinite time in the past.

Then you are claiming to know the mind of god? You seem to be afflicted by delusions of grandeur. — Harry Hindu

Yes. Though I wouldn't call it grandeur. More a sense of reality.

Is the universe a teleological effect or a scientific effect of this teleological cause? — Harry Hindu

An effect of their thoughts, efforts, and creation power.

In order to find a loophole in the experiment, the hidden variable must include the experimenter. — PhilosophyRunner

Why? Non-local hidden variables exist without any observer

Gods would be the cause of a universe in which life develops. — Harry Hindu

Yes. But not in the scientific cause and effect sense. It's a teleological cause. A "theleo"logical cause.

You didn't make a distinction between your reasons and the reasons. Now that you have you are basically admitting that the reasons are subjective, therefore no one can ever be wrong about the reason for which they believe. — Harry Hindu

My reasons are the reasons.

The observation of the universe is simply evidence that the universe exists, not what caused it to exist. What caused it to exist and where would we find the evidence of its cause? What would the evidence look like? — Harry Hindu

The existence of the universe is the evidence.

Superdeterminism seems to include the choices made. Non-local hidden variables don't involve choices made. It are the objective variables and are the underlying mechanism leading to the observed chance behavior, like there are determining processes in the throwing of a dice.

Good observation, but the whole question of whether such relations can be described as 'logical' is what is at issue in this thread. — Wayfarer

If two natural events always turn up together they have a causal relation or a common cause. So if A and B always, either A causes B (in the case of temporal separation) or C causes A and B (if A and B spatially separated). If someone drinks water from a well, and the effect is always that that someone dies, the drinking of the water can be said to be the cause, though a direct cause of death is difficult to establish exactly.

Causal forks can explain correlations between spatially separated events. Like the entangled electron spins.

You can’t have culture without existing. Rocks exist too— they have no culture. — Xtrix

Rocks existing is a mental picture. In reality objective existence is not viewd on, has no perspective, no focus, is without POV, without an angle.

The spin orientation of both particles are not locally determined when the particles are created. That is the whole point of the Bell tests. The particle does not locally "know" what its spin is at creation. We have good experimental data to support this. — PhilosophyRunner

Experiments don't rule out non-local hidden variables. There are even experiments thinkable to decide if there are these things.

What if the effect of cause is unpredictable? Can we still call it a cause? Or the effect the effect? I think for cause and effect to exist, there has to be a logical relation between them. Can events happen in the first place if no causal relations exist? In German, cause is called "Ursache". The "primordial case". The prime mover. Is cause the logical necessity of effect? How is motion involved? Are objects moving in space cause and effect. Will reversing their motion cause effect to become cause? Is the drinking contaminated water the cause of death, or the contamination?

Pure gibberish. — 180 Proof

Gibberish is the only language we can apply if we want to describe what is meant by mind transfer or de- and upload. The way Wikipedia describes it is no upload.

There is no 'faster than light' signal between particles. In the spin orientation example the spin orientations of both particles are determined when the particles are created. Must be for the spin orientation of the two particles to be conserved — Edgar L Owen

I agree there is no FTL signal. I don't agree that the spin orientations are determined because the spins must be conserved. The spins of two electrons are entangled when interacting. Because the electrons can't be in the same state, the spin states are opposite. And they stay opposite during their separation. Without each of them having a fixed direction yet. Their direction is fixed upon measurement. The spin entanglement transcends space which makes it look that there is a FTL signal traveling. Which there isn't.

You just throw the ball back: "But then your claim is culturally dependent too". So what? That doesn't mean that your objective reality lays behind that again. You have to face it. Existence is culture dependent. It's not just some interesting objective feature of an objective reality that can have meaning and plays a role, it constitutes an objective reality. The very fact we exist is a culturally dependent observation. I don't say there is no objective absolute reality, the same for all. I just say it's not the same for all. Your objective story is another one than mine. In my story you are an indirect creature of God, claiming that existence is objective. Which it isn't. Of course, you exist, I exist, our stomach digests. If you look at it in a certain way. Then what is "it"? You will, like me, probably say, the material structures in my belly". But that's already a culture dependent statement. But in another story you and I, maybe all creatures on Earth, are no more than specks of dirt (no offense!).

Now you can throw the ball back again and say that all I say is culture dependent talk and that your natural objectivity rules supreme.

Ah yes. I see what you mean. So only in the case nothing is determined determinism can have impact?

Elementary particles contain the complete data of what they are. — Edgar L Owen

It's us who contain the data and compute. There is no structure in reality that computes the data of the electron behind the scenes. You project an idea on the electron.

Space shows itself by objects moving in it. This moving involves time. Space and time can be considered separately but space depends on motion and thus time, while motion, and thus time, depends on space. The finite and frame-independent speed of light gives the relative notion of spacetime and the notion of mass, cause, and effect. In the Newtonian concept of spacetime, the speed of light is infinite and space and time absolute, while mass, cause and effect, can't exist (which wasn't clear to Newton yet, as they obviously do exist, but he couldn't conclude that yet).

Then we will understand why the god posit was wrong. — universeness

You and I have absorbed about 2500 years of scientific thought in a half lifetime. Say the current supposed ToE, string theory is it (which I don't think). Then from where comes the string landscape?

So yes, machines, for instance, "have perspectives" (e.g. CCTV, neural net facial recognition systrm, radar array, JWST, etc). — 180 Proof

That's like saying a machine looks at the world. Which they don't. It's you projecting a perspective on them. Which I'm doing right now too for the sake of argument.

Determinism is perhaps the most useless philosophy. Does not mean it is wrong, but useless. — PhilosophyRunner

Determinism can have a strong impact on reality though. Determinism can lead to distancing. "Everything is determined. So let it all be". Or, "it's all determined, so it's my destiny to fight the power".

Note there are NO physical variables for any notion of causation in any scientific equation. — Edgar L Owen

What about the coupling constants? How, at the fundamental level, is your information processed and what's the info about?

You think it's possible to program a mind in a robot body?

I don't believe in it either and consider it total nonsense but then why Wiki puts it that way? Mind upload.

The non-sentient world is not yet viewed at from an angle, focused, or put in perspective. No boundary lines are projected yet. The objective atlas of the non-sentient world is a thick one. Every page is black or white. No legenda, no alfabetic content pages, no appendices, addenda, or rectifications.

The old Greek paradox of the impossibility of change. If a spoon changes into a knife how can it have changed if its no spoon anymore? The spoon can only change if it stays a spoon. If the knife into which it's changed is still a spoon. This confused the old Greek enormously. How can something have changed if its no longer that some thing? Permanence seems at odds with change. Democritus found a solution. Atoms! Static, unchanging tetrads, cubes, spheres, octahaeders, dodecahaeders, etc., with hooks to tangle up with each other to form transgressive shapes, coming in and floating out of existence.

Fantasies absolutely exist.

The problem with dark matter is that it's dark and probably can't be directly detected. Maybe if sky observation techniques get sufficiently sophisticated or if DM particles are detected on Earth it can be solved once and for all. The planned European gravitational wave detector can shed more light on this modern-day enigma.

We can see this in modern physics and cosmology with the general relativity theory. At the very small, local scale, quantum mechanics, the theory fails. Also, at the very large scale, it produces anomalies when dealing with cosmological spatial expansion. The anomalies are dealt with by positing things like dark matter and dark energy. (The dragon accounts for the failings in the predictions, because it has a mind of its own and doesn't follow the law every single time, exceptions to the rule). The desire to hang on to the theory, despite its failings produces the trickery. — Metaphysician Undercover

Dark matter is not an imaginary dragon. There is no Vulcan-like stuff discovered, true. But there is still the possibility dark matter is "normal" stuff, and gravity doesn't have to be "MONDed". Dark energy is consistent with general relativity. So both are no trickery dragons of failure, and can actually turn out to be the dragons with the strong wings to carry the status quo.

It is common today to take the concept religion as a taxon for sets of social practices, a category-concept whose paradigmatic examples are the so-called “world” religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Perhaps equally paradigmatic, though somewhat trickier to label, are forms of life that have not been given a name, either by practitioners or by observers, but are common to a geographical area or a group of people—for example, the religion of China or that of ancient Rome, the religion of the Yoruba or that of the Cherokee. In short, the concept is today used for a genus of social formations that includes several members, a type of which there are many tokens.

Which overlooks the overt actuality that God is not a concept. Religion might be, but G(g)od(s) is/are not.

Okay. A possible answer. Create, locally, a low mind pressure area around the mind to upload. Excite the subject. The person gets out of their mind. Apply the low mind pressure region and as soon the excited mind is drawn in, seal the region to conserve. Look for a new subject, let them get out of their mind again, and inject the collected mind. Upload complete!

Yes Alkis, someone finally did! :smile:

Or did you mean all in here are mindless?

If there is anyone in fear of it, it was Nietzsche. Good old Fredrick took hide of himself behind his über-moustache.

Damned! And I always thought why I have such a small penis! I'm a woman!
And I finally understand my high-pitched voice now!

Aha! :grin:

Indeed what causes this distinction, (quantum vs. classic) is a mystery in physics. — Josh Alfred

Doesn't that depend on the interpretation on QM?

Everything is a mental construction. Everything subjective. There’s no such thing as truth. Nothing exists. Everything changes— but change isn’t a thing. — Xtrix

There is such a thing as objective truth. But what that's like depends on the cultural medium it's in, on the story told. To claim that's not the case is a move away from humanity.

And what’s the argument, exactly? That nothing exists, that everything is a mental construction, or that any proposition or truth is impossible? — Xtrix

The argument is that the given, the absolute, objective reality, is culture dependent. Claiming it to be not only serves to favor one's own given.