and do you think they're talking about strong or weak emergence?

I don't see how those two questions are related to each other. I'm just saying, strong emergence is absolutely the opposite of saying emergent things are not causal - if anything, they're MORE causal than weak emergence.

I call it "radical lastthursdayism".

Lastthursdayism tells you, you should be skeptical that your entire existence didn't start last Thursday, with all your memories implanted but they didn't actually happen to you.

Radical Lastthursdayism says, that's constantly true, all the time - your existence is being renewed every moment and your memories are effectively implanted.

I've been struggling to fully wrap my head around it, hence why I've been watching videos like the above. It's fascinating and confusing

But “arena” has to be analogy — Fire Ologist

sure

It’s not like “space” can be a “thing-in-itself” like an arena is a thing. — Fire Ologist

Not so sure about this one though. Why are you sure? Why couldn't space be a thing? Relativity tells us spacetime can be stretched, compressed, and warped, and that doing so has measurable effects (effects we have actually measured, in real life).

If matter moves on its own, and experience is the result of how matter moves, then how could experience be causally efficacious? — MoK

that's not what "strong emergence" is saying. I think you might have strong and weak emergence mixed up.

what the hell is space- time — Fire Ologist

The arena upon which events happen

If consciousness is a strong emergent thing, then it cannot be causally efficacious in the world where physical objects obey the laws of nature — MoK

I don't think this is correct. I don't believe in strong emergence, but if there were strong emergence it would be casual - arguably more casual than weak emergence. With weak emergence, one can argue that it's the lower levels that are casual, and the higher levels of abstraction are noncausal. With strong emergence, that fundamentally changes. With strong emergence, high level objects have a sort of fundamental existence to them that they don't have in weak emergence

I had this thought too but not as clearly worded

since I couldn't find a video, I did ask an ai for a summary. https://g.co/gemini/share/11f0f523d7b3

In short, special relativity had to be derived as a consequence of Michelson Morley experiment as well as Maxwell's equations, and then General Relativity because he needed a way of keeping gravity fully local (in contrast to Newtonian gravity which involves instantaneous arrival of updated gravity information). Also he had this idea - that was explained in the video - about how a guy falling wouldn't feel that he is falling. The "happiest thought in his life", right?

Hmm I had a look and I'm not sure he has done that for relativity. He has many videos going into depth on many aspects of relativity, but I don't think he has one that explains the origins of relativity itself.

he has a huge video series that looks at different aspects of relativity. He might have one that goes over the reasons why it had to be thought of, I'll see if I find one like that.

I just watched two videos of his that explain the original inspiration for the idea of quantizing energy that led to quantum mechanics, so he does go into that kind of topic

I think there are small enough intervals of time such that nothing has changed in your brain to make you feel any different than the moment before. Even then, the argument would be that this is simply a new moment with a new you who is, in every consciously relevant way, the same as the old you.

We all go through an imperfect transporter, literally every moment of our lives. Your body is not physically identical to itself from one moment to another: it evolves continuously in time — SophistiCat

As if right on cue! After my last post.

EXACTLY!

Even without injury, or misplaced atoms from a transporter accident, even thinking about a perfect transporter and the question of continuity of consciousness...

I actually think there's an argument for consciousness NEVER being continuous, period. Like even just you, now, not being transported. There's an argument that the you that is experiencing the middle of this sentence now is a different you than the one experiencing the end of the sentence now. That continuity of experience is equally illusory in a way, all the time.

It's an interesting thought and I do find it genuinely compelling.

However, in the transporter scenario, there's a binary that we've introduced: either you've survived the process -- whether or not you have brain damage -- or you simply died on the source plate, lights out. — Mijin

Honestly I think it's the same question with or without transportation.

But, in his OP, MoK, derived the conclusion that there ought to be such a "function" from the premise that there ought to be a "reason" why the system has the emergent property that it has. But this inference isn't valid. — Pierre-Normand

Yeah it definitely seems like op is more just assuming it's weak emergence. I mean I agree with that assumption, but I agree with you that he kinda leaps in with that assumption rather than making a good case for it.

The condition that the macro-property, or holistic property, be a function of the properties of the parts of a system (including, presumably, relational properties) seems too weak to preclude strong (irreducible) emergence and also too weak to guarantee weak (reducible) emergence — Pierre-Normand

I wasn't entirely sure what op meant by "a function of" in this context, so I (perhaps embarrassingly) asked ai:

In the context of the provided text, saying one thing is "a function of" another thing means that the property of a system can be mathematically or logically described and derived from the properties of its constituent parts [textual content].

If the macro property is directly derivable from the properties and interactions of its parts - as in, it can analytically be confirmed to be a necessary consequence of the interactions of the parts - I would say that that IS what weak emergence is. It's not too weak to guarantee weak emergence, it's basically the definition of weak emergence.

Another aspect is that because it relies on commitment rather than deduction, the easy counter to it is, it's assuming they're committing because they WANT to leave. I don't think anything in the problem statement explicitly indicates that they want to leave, just that they do leave when they've correctly deduced their eye colour.

But this aspect is less important than the previous one. It really matters when it starts working

We all think this never works. You know this doesn't work at low n, but think it does at high n. Therefore it is incumbent on you to find the special n where it starts working — hypericin

Yeah this is definitely an aspect that still bothers me. And it will endlessly make the "guru says nothing" solution distasteful unless it's figured out.

I will say that it's food for thought for me. I might seem dismissive and like I'm refusing to accept it, but I'm running it around in my mind and there are moments where I think, maybe... maybe Michael actually does have it right and the guru doesn't need to say anything.

I'm leaning towards thinking it's not correct but it's only a lean.

too much mind reading for me personally. Not deductive.

I think adding "we all know the same thing" is something unnatural you added tbh. It's not in the problem statement. It's basically cheating yourself into a false solution.

but they all know they could, and they all, according to you, know exactly the same thing, so they all know they could subtract 95 and it would still work. That'll save them some waiting. Why not?

Either way, I know that everyone with my eye colour knows exactly what I know, and so knows that if every person commits to the rule: "if the n
people I see with X
eyes don't leave on day n-95
then I will leave on day n-94
and declare that I have X
eyes" then everyone will leave the island having correctly declared their eye colour.

Therefore, I know that if every person commits to the rule: — Michael

Yes but you don't know that every person will do that. Therein lies the problem

the point you were focusing on is it's validity.

You enter some premise - some premise that isn't derived from the problem statement - and if you can use that premise with the rest of the problem statement to get everyone to leave with the correct eye colours, then it's valid. That's the way you've been arguing.

You've inserted a "commitment" and once inserted it allows you to get everyone to leave. I did the same with n-95

but you also know it's a valid argument if you replace a2 and B2 with this premise:

Every person commits to the rule: "if the n
people I see with X
eyes don't leave on day n-95
then I will leave on day n-94
and declare that I have X
eyes"

it might be, but unfortunately it exists in a sea of equally valid arguments with equally arbitrary premises. Suppose they replace 2 with committing to leave on X + 5 days. Or even X - 10 days. Hell maybe even X - 95 days, why not?

Seems like it requires mind reading to me for them to assume that about everyone else.

If they all could assume that about everyone else, sure, they get off the island. But they have no idea what everyone is committing to. This isn't a commitment puzzle.

a premise that comes from where? Why would one of these blue eyed people think of that particular premise?

what is 2? What do you call that? It's not part of the setup. It's not a known fact about the scenario. It's also not a necessary consequence of the scenario setup.

It's not even an assumption. This blue eyed person doesn't just immediately start assuming everyone has committed to the rule.

What is it?

okay so if that's not valid, then when you start out unsure if you're on an island with m blue eyed people or m-1 blue eyed people, you can't rely on it being true that "if there were m-1 blue eyed people, they would have left in m-1 days - therefore there are more than m-1 people with blue eyes, therefore I can leave on night m"

Because that's what this is about at root. There are only 2 possibilities from the perspective of a blue eyed person: either there are m-1 blue eyed people, or m. He's trying to deduce which world has in.

If he's waiting to see if m-1 people maybe don't leave in m-1 days, but it turns out to be FALSE that m-1 people would leave in m-1 days, then waiting for that doesn't tell him what world he's in. He could be in a world where m-1 people have blue eyes, or m people have blue eyes.

These guys don't want to get tortured for eternity. They can't rely on iffy reasoning. They have to be SURE. No guessing allowed. Only deductions.

So if it's at all possible that m-1 people WOULDN'T leave in m-1 days, then we absolutely cannot then say, "oh well I didn't see m-1 people leave in m-1 days, so therefore there must be m blue eyed little"

So if m is 100, each blue eyed person sees 99 blue eyed people and they, as perfect logicians (not perfect planners, not perfect committers to rules), have to ask themselves, can I really be sure 99 people would leave in 99 days? If they're anything less than deductively sure, they can't leave in 100 days.

and I'm trying to talk to you about that. You have this here:

if the n
people I see with X
eyes don't leave on day n

so that means, surely, that it's completely agreeable when I point out that your logic relies on this also being true:

If there are only 99, they'll leave on day 99.

if I don't agree with your conclusion we can't continue. Yeah okay buddy. I don't know why you want to talk to anybody lol. This is a philosophy forum. We can disagree with you, don't be weird about it.

sure it follows. This is a deduction puzzle. You see 99 people with blue eyes, you have two possibilities: either you're on an island with 99 blue eyed people and you don't have blue eyes, or 100 and you do.

Surely your logic involves the following statements at some level, implicitly or explicitly:

If there are only 99, they'll leave on day 99.

If there are 100, the 99 I see won't leave on day 99.

No?

Your insistence that if my reasoning works for 100 then it must work for 1, and so that if it doesn't work for 1 then it doesn't work for 100, is false. — Michael

You're skipping steps again. Usually you skip up - you go from some low number, get tired of thinking about that, and skip all the way up to 100. Now you're doing the opposite - you're going from 100 straight down to 1.

Don't. Skip.

Be patient, take it one step at a time

I didn't say if it works for 100, it must work for 1. I said if it works for 100, it works for 99. If it doesn't work for 99, it can't work for 100.

they can't count themselves. They can count everyone else

can you describe what the problem is?

do you still think that, or you just used to think it?