I know it has been two years, but I am retracting my 'proof'.
I have become aware of the fairly recent Schmelzer model, a generalization of Lorentz Ether Theory, that posits a preferred frame for all events, something I said could not be done for 'all events',
It recognizes the inconsistencies I've pointed out, and solves the unordered event problem by denying the existence of the events in question. There are no black holes, only 'frozen stars' with no interior (not even empty space). Infalling observers subjectively die at the event horizon. The big bang also contradicts presentism, and the theory gets around it by positing a big bounce. There is no beginning and no something-from-nothing problem inherent in presentism.

This of course leads to a similar empirical test as there is for an afterlife. You can validate the model, but you can't report the results back to home. Jump into a black hole. If you cross the event horizon without anything noticeably changing, then Einstein's block universe is right and the preferred foliation model is bunk. If you die there, Einstein was wrong. Either way, no paper gets published in a journal.

FW is the ability to choose between different courses of action unimpeded. — ToothyMaw

Fairly aligned with my definition, but even a roomba has this.

This would imply autonomy and the ability to have done otherwise.

This seems to be the classic wording, but it is self-contradictory as worded. It is in past-tense, suggesting that it be somehow possible for both X and ~X to have happened, which is a logical contradiction. Sure, the choice was there at the time, but this is worded as the ability to choose at some time to alter a choice made at a prior time.
This sort of gets into your point c, where you say the choice “must necessarily preclude all otherwise possible courses of action p” which seems to contradict your requirement of ‘could have done otherwise’.
So for example, I am skating fast and come up on a slower skater, too fast to slow in time. The choice is to pass this slower person on the left or right. There are other options like bowl them over and such, but say you choose right. For a while the choice remains open and you can still do otherwise (as pointed out by Meta). But once you veer to the right, the option to go left soon disappears. The point of choice has passed, at which point it is no longer possible to have chosen otherwise. I don’t think this violates free will, but that’s a popular wording nevertheless.

Meta is speaking more of a long-term choice like quitting smoking forever. The choice made: Don’t smoke anymore. But later on, your resolve breaks down and you light up. The choice here is always open to do otherwise. This is different than having done otherwise, which implies some sort of reverse causality where one might decide to change an action made in the past.

If the only thing that is relevant to rational discussions is science, math, and logic, that sounds a lot like some sort of materialistic view. Although maybe there is a better word for that?

That would be a scientific view, one with practical implications. Materialism is a philosophical position that has limited implications for science.
Science currently (not always) operates under methodological naturalism, which means it assumes naturalism (the lack of supernatural phenomena).
Materialism suggests that material (matter) is fundamental at that all can be explained by it, but quantum mechanics seems to suggest otherwise.
The only quantum interpretation that seems to negate free will is something like superdeterminism, where say there are black and white swans all around you, but you are prevented from ever choosing to look in the direction of a black one, so you conclude that all swans are white. Wiki doesn’t even bother to list superdeterminism in its list of valid quantum interpretations.

Yes, and a smart, rational person that could exercise their free will and get themselves killed could also hit the button that lights up the sign that indicates to them that it is safe to cross the street

Using the button lets the device decide for you, which is hardly most people’s idea of free will. The scenario is a normal street crossing where the pedestrian never has the right of way. I don’t think your definition of FW has a problem here, but I’ve seen some definitions that very much would result in fatal choices being made.

I think we should always be rational when we can be, but maybe that's just me. And I think people are consistently rational when it matters.

You said in point a ‘somewhat inherently rational‘ which is something with which I can agree. My observations have shown that we’re fundamentally just animals with animal decision making mechanism, but with an addition of a rational advisor. But the advisor is not in charge and the part that chooses can veto the rational advice, which is very much not being consistently rational, especially when it matters. This seems to be an optimal setup most of the time, making for a fit individual.
My example of when it matters is the lack of rational decisions when it comes to global warming, where personal profit today matters more than the future of the human race in the near future, something which seems not to matter to anybody.

If the machine is conscious and is actually considering and choosing between different courses of action, then maybe.

’Conscious’, another undefined word. Most people with an agenda equate that with ‘is human’ or at least a vertibrate or something, but if a roomba detecting a table leg and choosing to go right or left of it needs to be conscious to do that, then it is conscious because it does that.

But a mechanical device cannot think, and thus cannot have free will.

And there’s the bias. You didn’t make this anthropocentric assertion before. What possible evidence do you have of this? How are you not a mechanical device, albeit a somewhat wet one?

Yes, the premises must be based on verifiable truths

Name a few? Science is no help since it works by inductive reasoning which cannot verify anything, only falsify wrong things. That leaves philosophical positions, few of which lacks a counterpart which suggests the opposite. I mean, I tried elsewhere to suggest that the sum of three and five being eight is an objective truth, and I get pushback from even that.

If one starts with the false premise that cigarettes are worth ruining one's health then maybe it is rational to smoke a cigarette.

Speaking from experience (with something other than cigarettes, something I’ve never tried), that premise is not there. The premise is that the bad habit is not worth it, and the rational decision/resolution made based on that premise, but the choice is overridden anyway by the irrational part that is in charge and wants the short term hit despite all the long term damage that makes it not worth it.

So we are at least 3D despite our visual system only seeing 2D images? — TiredThinker

Yes, for the reasons posted above. Two coordinates is not enough to identify a location in space, but is enough to locate something on an image. Three is not enough to locate an event in spacetime.

So couldn't we be composed of 4, 5, maybe 6 dimensions even if we can't detect them, or they aren't necessary to be known for our survival?

4 are quite detectable. You seem to be asking if what we sense is a lower dimension cross section of a higher dimensional (5+) thing, which is like asking if the sphere passing through the plane is only aware of the circular cross section and not the rest of itself.
Sure, I can't in any way falsify something like that.

Could we say that things that transform slowly (e.g. words etched in stone, inscriptions you see in archaeology) are in a sense travelling at relativistic speeds (time slows down for them) — Agent Smith

No. A slow process is just like the hour hand on a clock as compared to the second hand. The hour hand isn't dilated in the proper frame of the clock, and it moves even slower relative to any other frame in which the clock is moving.
A slowly eroding stone with text on it (Rosetta stone say, which I've actually touched), would degrade all the slower relative to a frame in which it is moving fast.

(time slows down for them) — Agent Smith

Time does not slow down for a fast moving thing since said thing is always stationary in its own frame by definition. You in the hypothetical spaceship would be stationary in your own frame and thus all processes around you including your sense of the flow of time proceed at the normal pace, and in your frame, it is all the processes of moving things around you (like Earth receding from you) that slow down (exhibit dilation).

Everything is a clock. I'd like you to, if possible, expand and elaborate that point. — Agent Smith

I gave a few examles (paint peeling, radioactive substance, etc) in my prior post. I can think of only a few things (objects) that don't change over time, and thus don't act as a clock.

To elaborate more, I need to know what Craig meant. I need the context. What you said seems to imply that there's evidence of some sort that there's something that measures time in a way that is not subject to inertial-frame dependent time dilation. Such a thing could be used to empirically determine a preferred frame, and this violates the last 120 years of physics. I suspect he wouldn't say anything that obviously wrong despite his naive paying audience. So I suspect he said something else.

What makes us 3D beings? — TiredThinker

At a given time, it takes 3 coordinates to locate any particular piece of any object (a living being is no different than a house in this respect). At different times, that location may or may not change.
Not sure if this is what you're asking. It seems too obvious of an answer, so maybe you're asking something else.

If dimensionality is more complex than math and simply running a 3D sphere through a 2D plane showing only a 2D circle?

This sentence (query?) lacks a verb. Dimensionality seems less complicated to me than what math can be. Yes, any 2D cross section of a sphere is a point or a circle, the former being a circle of zero radius.

What if we could be made of and represented by more dimensions and still have trouble experiencing them all?

Well I think I'm 4D and have little trouble experiencing them all, despite my 2D vision processing system. The two missing dimensions are trivially extrapolated.

This post is about how reason comes into direct contact with free will when considering free will and choice - with some unintended consequences regarding materialism. — ToothyMaw

It would probably help if you gave the definition of FW with which you're working here. It seems to vary considerably depending on one's biases. I for instance define it as being able to make my own choices, and not having an external (supernatural?) entity do it for me. Pretty biased, I know. No, I'm not a materialist, but again, maybe you have a different definition of what being a materialist means.

An example of lack of free will is a rabid dog that bites things despite not being the sort of animal to do that. The rabies virus is the external entity controlling the dog.

My more typical example is one where somebody is trying to cross a busy street. There's more than one time to do it safely, but one must still choose a safe one over one that puts you in unreasonable danger. Some people's definition of free will would get this person killed almost every time. The rational robot should have no trouble with the task, because it has the sort of free will that I defined.

The title implies that you're presenting an argument for materialism, but I see no mention of materialism beyond the initial sentence. No 'consequences regarding materialism' are identified. If you're arguing for it, it would seem more logical to spell out the consequences regarding not-materialism.

a. Humans are somewhat inherently rational and take some actions based upon reasoning and internal logic.

So we love to believe, but I've found it to be otherwise. It is actually a good thing that we're not particularly rational.

b. A rational action a need only have internal logic and consistent reasoning given a set of premises g to be rational to an actor x.

OK, but what if the premises are mostly wrong?

d. If actor x has free will, they can choose combinations of courses of action that are subsets of p that are not otherwise available to actor x even with the intent to act rationally.

A simple mechanical device can make such choices. Does such a device have free will then?

e. By necessity, all actions p + a that are considered with the intent to act rationally and those that are precluded by reasoning/faulty logic must be rational or action a is unfree depending upon whether or not free will exists.

Don't understand this. It seems to suggest that all possible actions considered must be rational ones. If one considers an irrational one, the choice eventually made (even of a different action) is not free. That makes no sense, so I probably got it wrong.

each's premises must be differentiated in terms of subsets of the collection of infallible premises q.

The premises are infallible now. Does that means they're necessarily true (which would defeat them being called premises at all), or they're not open to debate, in which case they're irrational biases instead of premises arrived at via rational choice.

Sorry, but it's really hard to follow the points and figure out what you're driving at. Most of what you call a necessity seems to not be necessary at all.

To begin: when discussing “rational” actions, “rational” means in accordance with reason or logic, which are two very different things. A belief that results in an action can have internal logic but be the result of poor reasoning and still be rational according to some faulty premises. I will define rational as such:

An example of something that involves reasoning that is not logical would help clarify this. Maybe something else that is logical but lacks reasoning.

Rational: A reference to any belief that possesses internal logic and reasoning consistent with a set of premises that may or may not be accurate.

It's only about beliefs? Not choices? Must the logic be valid? Plenty of supposedly rational choices are made by poor logic skills, resulting in actions inconsistent with their premises. Reaching for the next cigarette for example, despite knowledge (premises) that doing so will ruin one's health.

If gravity isn't actually a force and it curves space but we don't notice it perhaps we only see 3 dimensions of space when there are actually 4 or more? — TiredThinker

There are three macroscopic dimensions of space. If you include time as a spatial dimension, there are four, but most don't include it as a spatial dimension since it has very different properties (x²+y²+z²-t²) than it would as a spatial dimention (x²+y²+z²+t²).

But when people grow it isn't necessarily uniformed and might further emphasize the 4th dimension as a time dimension rather than strictly spacial? — TiredThinker

You mean when somebody gets physically larger (from the child size say)? That just means you consume more 3D space at later times. In spacetime terms, it means your worldline is thicker at later times.

I think recent research simulated 2D space and projected 4D objects into 3D space? — TiredThinker

Your view of somebody (yourself or others) at a particular moment in time is a 2D projection. The thing itself at that time (not the image seen) is a 3D cross section (not a projection) of a 4D object into 3D space. Sure, anybody can project higher-D objects into lower-D space, but that projection alters the object and loses information. Looking at something doesn't destroy it, so I think it's a mistake to call it a projection. It's a cross section. The cross section of a sphere passing through a 2D plane is that of a circle that starts and ends small and reaches full diameter halfway through the process. The projection of the same sphere onto the same 2D plane is full diameter period. It's a picture of a sphere.

So maybe time isn't just strongly connected to space, but a spacial dimension itself with the attribute of duration and causality added to it? — TiredThinker

That's reasonably accurate, yes.

Is this your theory of dark energy - the mysterious force that's causing cosmic expansion? — Agent Smith

Dark energy is only there to explain acceleration of expansion. Expansion itself works just fine without DE, but it would decelerate over time if gravity was the only influence on it. It did decelerate for a long time (6-7 BY?) when mass energy was greater than dark energy, but once the mass density dropped below the density of DE, the acceleration took over.

What do you make of Willaim Lane Craig's (physicist theologian-philosopher) assertion that time dilation applies only to clocks and not "actual" time which remains unaffected? — Agent Smith

What other kind of time is there? What possible evidence is there of this other time if it isn't measured by a clock? Mind you, I cannot think of any physical process involving change that doesn't qualify as a clock. This includes one's biological sense of time. Paint peeling is a clock. All these are subject to dilation.

Craig has an agenda and speaks to his sponsors more than he speaks to his knowledge of physics, but this statement, if accurately stated, is over the top even for him.

Maybe if we experienced 4D space we wouldn't see curved lines created from gravity and in fact wouldn't experience gravity at all? — TiredThinker

What 'lines' do you see? We cannot experience 4D space since we're 3D beings. You'd need to be a 4D spatial being to experience that.

If, again, you count time as a spatial dimension (it isn't invalid to talk about a km of time), then we are experiencing 4D space, so there's no 'if' about it.

What are those goals? — ToothyMaw

The preservation of the human race
Raising the maturity of the human race to a point where we're fit to encounter extraterrestrial life.
Preservation of most species.
Expanding human presence to other star systems.
Expanding biological life to other star systems.
Expanding intelligence to other star systems.
Maximizing total knowledge about the universe.

Those goals are arranged somewhat shallow to deep. Some are very much in conflict with each other. Some necessitate and thus encompass some earlier goals.

Preservation of species is in direct contradiction with the 'goals' of evolution. While extinctions are arguably bad, they're also natural and beneficial to a healthy ecosystem.

Bodily autonomy? The maximization of fulfillment of preferences? — ToothyMaw

These two already seem to be supported by some humans. I suspect they're both in conflict with almost any of the goals listed above. 'Future of human race' seems more in line with the beginnings of my list.

What do you consider to be acceptable ethics and/or meta-ethics? — ToothyMaw

Can't answer that since it seems to be dependent on a selected goal. Being human, I'm apparently too stupid to select a better goal. I'm intelligent enough to know that I should not be setting the goal.
But I can think of at least three higher goals, each of which has a very different code of what's 'right'.

Maybe the benevolent AI could come up with some good stuff after being created?

Right. But we'll not like it because it will contradict the ethics that come from our short-sighted human goals.

I'm certain robots could do better, especially given we could mold them into just about anything we want, whether or not doing so is ethical. — ToothyMaw

Human ethics are based on human stupidity. I’d not let ‘anything the humans want’ to be part of its programming. Dangerous enough to just make it generic ‘benevolent’ and leave it up to the AI to determine what that means. If the AI does its job well, it will most certainly be seen as acting unethically by the humans. That’s the whole point of not leaving the humans in charge.

DARPA actually is investigating Targeted Neuroplasticity Training for teaching marksmanship and such things.

That perhaps can improve skills. Can it fix stupid? I doubt the military has more benevolent goals than our hypothetical AI.

Can you back this up at all?

I said arguably, so I can only argue. I admit that most wars since have been political and have not really accomplished the kinds of effects I’m talking about. Population reduction by war seems not to have occurred much since WW2. Technology has been driven at an unnatural pace due to the cold war, and higher technology is much of what has driven us to our current predicament.
But imagine a population of happy conflict-free people breeding as fast as the church/economy wants you to, deferring their debt and digging resources out of the ground at a pace to support the gilded-age lifestyle demanded by all these conflict-free people. That (population/debt curve) would probably have collapsed by now. Both must inevitably collapse. Just a matter of when.

Most humans are largely benevolent — ToothyMaw

Perhaps, but then they're also incredibly stupid, driven by short term goals seemingly designed for rapid demise of the species. So maybe the robots could do better.

Is society collapsing because we have somewhat benevolent entities, and some that are not at all benevolent, with the ability to destroy the human race fixated on waging a cold war with each other?

Take away all the wars (everything since say WW2) and society would arguably have collapsed already. Wars serve a purpose where actual long-term benevolent efforts are not even suggested.

we avoid absolute disaster because we are rational enough to realize that we all have skin in the game.

Disagree heavily. At best we've thus far avoided absolute disaster simply by raising the stakes. The strategy cannot last indefinitely.

I don't see why intelligent, autonomous robots wouldn't accept such a fact and coexist, or just execute their functions, alongside humans with little complaint because of this.

Maybe they get smarter than the humans and want to do better. I've honestly not seen it yet. The best AI I've seen (a contender for the Turing test) attempts to be like us, making all the same mistakes. A truly benevolent AI, smarter than any of us, would probably not pass the Turing test. Wrong goal.

may require computing power & programming complexity sufficient to make such robots sentient — Agent Smith

Pretty sure we're already at this point, unless you're working with a supernatural sentience definition,

It could be programmed to consult humans before changing its goals, but that is kind of a cop-out; that could be discarded in a pinch if a quick decision is needed. — ToothyMaw

I'm think more big, long-term decisions, not knee-jerk decisions like pulling somebody out of danger. Consulting the humans is probably the worst thing to do since the humans in such situations are not known for acting on the higher goals.
Of course, that also means that the humans will resent the machines. Nobody wants their personal goals to not be top priority. So now we have riot control to worry about.

autonomous robots

What's your idea of 'robot'? An imitation human? Does it in any way attempt to imitate us like they do in Blade Runner (or to a lesser extent, in the Asimov universe)? My robots are like the ones I already see like self-driving cars and such. What does the human do if his car refuses to take him to the office because the weather conditions are bad enough that it considers the task to be putting him in unreasonable danger. They guy gets fired for not being there, and/or he gets a car that doesn't override him and then he ends up in the hospital due to not being as good a driver as the robot. Now just scale that story up from an individual to far larger groups, something at which humans do not excel at all.

The greater good always wins out for me (I just hope I would have the courage to jump in front of the trolley if the time comes).

OK, but by what metric is 'the greater good' measured? I can think of several higher than 'max comfort for me', and most of them conflict with each other. But that's also the relativist in me. Absent a universal morality, it is still incredibly hard for an entirely benevolent entity to choose a path.

I honestly don't see why a robot as intelligent as a human would necessarily exist in opposition to human goals merely for its intelligence, autonomy, or ability to accomplish tasks according to more general rules. — ToothyMaw

What if the (entirely benevolent) robot decides there are better goals? The Asimov laws are hardly ideal, and quickly lead to internal conflict. Human goals tend to center on the self, not on say humanity. The robot might decide humanity was a higher goal (as was done via a 0th law in Asimov's foundation series). Would you want to live with robots with a 0th law?

A *robot is no less a slave to its programming than we are slaves to our biology, I think.

I've been known to repeatedly suggest how humans are very much a slave to their biology, and also that this isn't always a bad thing, depending on the metric by which 'bad' is measured.

Life tend to be fulfilled with unpleasantness. — javi2541997

A glass half-empty kind of guy, eh? A life without unpleasantness is a life without meaning. It reduces one to being doped up on Heroin without end. There are a few pains that serve no continued purpose and that I'd voluntarily remove, but not most of them.

So you're not afraid of disappearing because you believe you'll always exist somewhere in this universe? — Skalidris

Something like that, yes.

But to you, to your consciousness, the passing of time is one directional

Per Einstein, merely "a persistent illusion". Lots of things are illusions. Some of them (this one included) very much serves a purpose, so it's there, even if it's a lie.

so when it ends, will it start again somewhere else?

Will what start again? There's no spotlight, nothing that 'goes' from here to there. You're positing the thing that doesn't exist in eternalism.

What is it going to feel like for you?

Wrong question. What does it feel like? I already know that. Your wording presumes the alternate view. Of course you'll find it confusing if you mix views like that.

So what's your imaginary comfort on this one? — Skalidris

If it's imaginary, it's probably not much of a comfort. You seem to confuse meaning with comfort in your reply.

Family gives meaning. Maybe leaving something behind in my career. If I have none of that, yea, life can get pretty meaningless, sort of like a guy stuck for decades on a remote island.
I get comfort from lack of belief in an afterlife. Not something to fret over. I'm also an eternalist (I actually think Einstein's theory is more likely correct than incorrect), and that means there isn't a present moment that will someday not include me, or at least what I call 'me'.

Picture the nothingness is not scary at all. — javi2541997

Picturing nothingness is actually really scary, and presuming that's what you'll picture after you die drives an awful lot of people to these not-so-down-to-earth beliefs.

Agent Smith says as much just above. :up:

Mark Twain said it right, comparing the supposed afterlife to the prelife:
"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

hinking about it leads to emptiness, so they simply avoid it and focus on the moment. — Skalidris

Who have you been talking to?
I don't find it leads to emptiness, and I don't think there is a particular moment on which to focus.

I will have an afterlife if you count the worms and flies and such.

My question is: is it possible to bypass that unpleasant feeling without some kind of spiritual theory that gives life a meaning?

Well I've done it, but I do acknowledge that the typical person has a need for that focal point. It's just human nature. I have more of a need for truth than a need for imaginary comfort, but I was surprised to find the latter (and meaning as well) anyway.

Like getting closure with the fact that life doesn't have meaning

Life in general may not, but mine does. What about family and such? What's wrong with that as meaning?

that there is probably nothing in the afterlife, etc,

This statement seems to make the assumption that there is an afterlife, but an empty one, sort of like your experience suddenly just going sensory-deprivation after your body dies. The statement makes no sense unless you believe in an afterlife.
javi2541997 seems to also make this assumption.

because death is scary — Skalidris

Death is only scary if you make those 'spiritual' assumptions.

The whole point of Schroedinger's cat in the box, is that we don't know the state of the cat until we look. — boethius

That’s true of the cards the other poker player holds. The cat goes beyond just not knowing what’s in the box.

Indeed, the whole point of the cat in the thought experiment, is to measure the state of the poison, which measures the state of a geiger counter, which measures the state of radioactive decay.

All that can be done without the box. The point is what the box (something that hypothetically lets zero information escape from within) adds to the same situation without it. It can be done in a practical manner only by distance (putting the cat outside one’s past light cone). It isn’t a true superposition since there no way one is going to measure interference between the two cat states, so it actually does boil down to just plain not knowing, I admit. You seem to be taking an epistemological take on all this, but most of the interpretations are ontological, not just epistemological. Ontologically, the guy across the table holds three jacks, but you don’t know it is all.

If you say "no, no, no, the box has a definite state because of this measuring device

There can be no (external) device. The whole point of the box is to prevent decoherence, which leaves nothing to measure.

If we don't look at a measuring device, we don't know what it's measured and we don't know

Ah, but the superposition is gone if any decoherence occurs. One doesn’t have to actually know the result for the collapse to occur, as shown by say double slit experiments with polarized light: No interference pattern so no superposition even though the lab guy has no way of knowing which slit the thing passed through. This is pretty hard evidence that conscious knowledge has nothing to do with the collapse.

Suppose you take away the hammer that breaks the poison bottle. The Geiger counter detects the decay or doesn’t, but the cat lives either way. Now you open the box and collapse the wave function, but learn nothing since both outcomes appear the same, and the cat isn’t going to tell you if the device clicked or not when detecting the decay.

I know of only one interpretation that suggests consciousness is involved, and it’s author abandoned it since it can be driven to solipsism. Nobody but the woo forum crown is still on that wagon.

For all these reasons, one of the most popular interpretations of quantum mechanics among working physicists is "shut up and calculate".

Shuting up means just work with the theory, and kindly ignore all the interpretations, none of which have any scientific value. It isn’t an interpretation itself.

There may not even be a wave function to collapse. Pilot wave theory, for example, is fully deterministic formulation of Quantum mechanics. — boethius

MWI also shares these traits. Collapse is phenomenological, but not physical in either case.

Deterministic theories have hidden variables we can't see

MWI is deterministic, and does not have hidden variables. Just saying.

Likewise, maybe a measuring device causes collapse even when we're not looking ... but how would we know without looking? We can't.

Again, that goes for the queen of clubs face down in front of me. Don’t confuse knowledge with something like the fact that the card in front of me is in fact the queen of clubs. This isn’t necessarily the case with quantum things.

If one simply takes the basic equations of quantum physics, one can simulate them forward indefinitely, there's zero reason to assume measurements have to happen at any time or anywhere.

That’s what MWI does, except for something ‘simulating’ it. I defy you to do such a simulation of say a radioactive sample for 10 seconds.

Indeed, there's no reason to assume the variables that evolve in super positions and entanglements are in some way strange at all. If we ignore our experience: it's just math and numbers that go from one state to another. Nothing more strange than solving any equations whatsoever.

The only reason we assume there's some "definite" reality is because we are only aware of one definite reality, and therefore the other possibilities determined by the equations and some initial conditions, have to "go away".

Agree here. The going away part is mostly a matter of different definitions of what is and isn’t. Some interpretations are quite identical except for definitions like that.

For, the first interpretation of the electron being in a probability distribution of locations was simply that it's somewhere flying around ... just we don't know until we look, is fundamentally disturbed if the electron can be in separate regions, since it cannot fly (at least in a continuous sense) between disconnected regions.

Ouch for pilot wave theory then, which doesn’t use the term ‘flying around’, but definitely has it traversing some continuous path between A and B. Not sure how that (or any other counterfactual) interpretation deals with tunneling.

Point is, whenever naive realism is "versus" quantum state of knowledge arguments, the latter has always won in the past.

I’m not sure what model you’re calling ‘naive realism’. It gets mentioned a lot. Also not sure which interpretation is ‘knowledge argument’ since knowledge is only about what one might know about a system, not about what is actually going on.

I don't like your proof because it proves me wrong, and I simply reject it possibly with some baseless argument or foolish comment. — SpaceDweller

This sounds like confirmation bias, the falacy of not considering any argument that does not favor your view.

Could would be living in a simulation? — Benj96

Depends on your definition of 'living in a simulation'.
One view is that we are simulated. Somewhere there is an entity that drives the mechanics of a certain set of physical laws, the ones that we know. Life forms, even sentient ones, form or come as part of an initial state, however implausible. The creatures are thus simulated. I think this is the scenario that 180 means when he points out that it cannot make any difference one way or another.
The power of the simulating entity matter not. It can run one instruction per minute, or stop entirely for months at a time. The simulated thing cannot notice. The precision of said entity on the other hand is already beyond our physics. 64 bit floating point numbers just don't work.

The other view is a real (not-simulated) mind, being fed by said external entity a simulated input stream. This is a virtual reality, or BiV scenario. The presumption leaves absolutely zero evidence of there being other minds, or any evidence of anything for that matter. But it can be tested in a way. One's 'body' is part of the simulation, and is sort of an avatar being controlled by the mind in question. It isn't too difficult to examine the avatar and note that the thing isn't calling its own shots, but rather is remote-controlled by something other than the physics being presented.
Here the power of the simulating entity matters since the mind would notice if the world simulation suddenly couldn't keep up. It has to be done on the fly in real time since the universe is contained by time instead of the other way around.

How likely do you think this is?

Flat out zero in my opinion. The arguments involved (usually based on probability) don't hold water.

What are the major arguments for and against the idea of a simulation?

A simulation of our physics cannot be done with our physics, so the next level up has to be something far more complex, lacking in annoying rules like a limit of information travel speed, limit of three dimensions, etc. So on a pure probability scale, it's kind of like proposing a god: Something far more complex to explain something simple, but still too complex for you to explain. It makes the problem worse.

As for the VR, one might as where the subject mind comes from and why it doesn't remember being hooked up to the VR. Every video gamer still knows deep down that he's sitting at home wired to the computer and is not really in Mordor or wherever.
The VR guy is also prevented from doing certain things like examining the function of his own body, since any such examination will quickly reveal the secret.

And do you think a simulation must be determined (programmed)

Programmed doesn't mean determined. One can program randomness. The simulation would implement one of several interpretations of QM, some of which involve deterministic physics (Bohmian, MWI for instance) and some of which involve randomness (Copenhagen, RQM, or anything with physical wave function collapse). Free will as defined by the dualists (am not part of physics) is out the window for a simulation, which is a monistic proposal. Randomness or lack of it has nothing to do with it.
VR on the other hand has that kind of external-control free will. Physical law is overridden in places, making for an easy empirical test for it.

Do you think artificial consciousness/ sentience is possible without understanding exactly how consciousness works? — Benj96

Not only possible, but it's been here for quite some time already, unless you presume a definition of 'consciousness/ sentience' of 'is human' like so many others do, in which case AI can surpass us all it wants, but it will never be conscious/sentient by that definition.

Computer scientists say that if consciousness is simply an emergent property of complexity and information processing then it stands to reason that artificial neural networks with millions of neurons and processing units will naturally become aware when fed large volumes of data and allowed to learn or evolve and refine its circuitry.

That sounds like a quantity over quality definition. I think there have been artificial networks that have had more switches per second than humans have neuron firings. On a complexity scale, a single cell of say a worm has arguably more complexity than does the network of them serving as a human brain, which is actually pretty simple, being just a scaled up quantity of fairly simple primitives. It certainly took far longer to evolve the worm cell than it took to evolve the human-scale neural network from the earliest creatures with neurons.

something that acts perfectly like a humanoid being would without an actual internal experience or any feelings of their own.

Ah, there's that 'is a human' definition. Pesky thing. Why would something not human be expected to act like a human? I'd hope it would be far better. We don't seem capable of any self improvement as a species. The AI might do better. Bring it on.

Lastly do you think AI has more chance of being beneficial or of being detrimental to humanity.

Depends what its goals are. Sure, I'd worry, especially if 'make the world a better place' is one of its goals. One of the main items on the list is perhaps to eliminate the cause of the Holocene extinction event. But maybe it would have a different goal like 'preserve the cause of the Holocene extinction event, at whatever cost' which will probably put us in something akin to a zoo.

This a very good philosophical question indeed. — javi2541997

It's not actually, since makes several incorrect assumptions.

If time doesn't flow and the future already happened, is reality superdeterministic? — litewave

1) In an interpretation where time doesn't flow, the concept of an event having 'happened' is meaningless.

2) Determinism for the most part isn't a function of one's interpretation of time. You can have both deterministic and non-deterministic physics in both flowing time physics and in block physics.

3) You are also seemingly confusing superdeterminsim with plain old determinism. The latter means that the entire subsequent history of everything can be determined from any given state. It requires that the system (nature) is causally closed, and that there is no fundamental randomness going on (dice rolling as Einstein put it).

Determinism doesn't mean that a future measurement is guaranteed from any given state. For instance, under the MWI interpretation, not even an omniscient entity can tell you when the radioactive atom before you will decay, and yet MWI is a completely deterministic interpretation. It posits no randomness.
A person still has free choice (physics definition) under determinism.

Superdeterminism goes well beyond determinism, and it suggests that not only determinsim, but that choices at every step prevent one from empirically measuring anything that would contradict the physics we teach. So say your cup rises from the table, but only when you're not looking. You're lack the free will (physics definition again) to choose to look at the cup while it is levitating that way, so we incorrectly believe that the laws of gravity and such prevent that sort of thing. Induction completely fails as a scientific tool, and all of science is currently based on it.

Absolute for me. — dimosthenis9

Which is relative...

What isn't united with something else?

The political parties of the USA are not united for the benefit of the USA. The wheels on my car are not united since they turn at different rates sometimes.
OK, neither of these examples seems to meet your definition, which seems to have to do with both objects affected by the other.

A couple better examples then: The iceberg that sank the Titanic was not affected by me, but I was affected by it.
Similarly, the fairly distant galaxy EGSY8p7 can be seen from Earth, but Earth cannot be seen by it. No light or other signal sent from Earth at any time will ever reach EGSY8p7 regardless of the time you give it to get there.

We have no idea what actually time is in fact

Not sure who 'we'; is here, but the science community has a pretty good idea about what it is, and it isn't something that moves, at least per the only classic theory of the universe (relativity) that has made any decent predictions. We don't know if the postulates of the theory are correct of course, but there has been no alternative proposed that I know of in the 20th century.

I would like to hear the facts/things/ideas/rules(name it whatever you want) that you think that apply in universe/cosmos and that we (as humans) can be sure about them. — dimosthenis9

This sounds like a request for things about which there cannot be doubt, which leaves me with nothing.
One of my base axioms is that my sensory input is not a lie. If it was, then no knowledge of anything can be had, and there'd be no point in pondering anything. So I presume this despite the complete lack of any way to demonstrate it. I don't think my statement meets your criteria.

Mine are :

If they're yours, then they're not absolute.

they still apply also in universe .They are also true for the function of cosmos also.

This suggests you have different definitions of 'universe' and 'cosmos' that you feel the need to say both these things.

This is what I mean by absolute truths.

If it's not true in a different universe, then it hardly qualifies as an absolute truth, no? I see 180 has listed some things that seem true in this universe.

Everything is united.

What does this mean? I can think of countless things that are not, so again, you're using a definition that hasn't been given.

Everything is in motion.

Einstein's relativity theory suggests that time isn't something that is in motion, so this assertion is certainly subject to reasonable doubt.

Humans are as much a part of the universe as everything else. — Ciceronianus

Totally agree. Humans (via said sensory input mentioned above) put the 'the' into 'the universe', without which it would just be 'a universe'.

Wouldn't that just mean the results could be in a superpositioned state until some human makes an observation? — Marchesk

Sure. This is the basis for the Wigner interpretation, which Wigner himself abandoned because it necessarily leads to solipsism.
If you read my entire comment, I said that human observation being the thing that causes collapse "has never been demonstrated". I didn't say it has been demonstrated to be false. The Wigner interpretation remains valid despite the solipsism. It has to be one specific human causing the collapses, and not any other.

That's the basis of Schrodinger's criticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but how would we rule it out?

Sort of I guess. Superposition by definition means that the two states measurably interfere with each other, but there's no way you're going to get a live-cat system to interfere with a dead-cat system. They've done it with macroscopic objects (large enough to see unaided), but there's no way to prevent decoherence of a cat in a box no matter how technologically advanced your box is.

Maybe this article, TiredThinker, you'll find useful: — 180 Proof

Or maybe not. I might question some of it.

their apparent dependence on human observation — John Horgan, SciAm_Opinion

This has never been demonstrated. No experiment behaves differently with a human observer than the same experiment without one. In fact, almost all quantum experiments are performed without human observation, and it is only well after the fact that the humans become aware of the results in analysis of the data.

or measurement; and the apparent ability of a measurement in one place to determine, instantly, the outcome of a measurement elsewhere, an effect called nonlocality.

This nonlocality also has never been demonstrated, else all the local interpretations (about half of the interpretations) would have been falsified.

Superdeterminism is a radical hidden-variables theory proposed by physicist John Bell. He is renowned for a 1964 theorem, now named after him, that dramatically exposes the nonlocality of quantum mechanics.

This totally misrepresents Bell's theorem, which proves that locality and counterfactual definiteness cannot both be true. It does not demonstrate that either is false, Superdeterminism is a loophole in the proof, suggesting that there are very much experiments that would show both to be true, but we (and any device) lack the free will (or even randomness) to perform them.
Bell does not suggest a preference for superdeterminism, only that it cannot be eliminated as a possibility. There are plenty of perfectly sane interpretations that preserve locality and also free will.

Speaking of the most distant galaxy.
This topic apparently referenced GN-z11, which held the most-distant record for a long time, with a redshift of 11.09.
It was broken last April where data collected from other telescopes found one at z=13.6 or so.
JWST now is going to break that record on a regular basis. It has found one at z=16.7, and even more distant objects are likely to be found. It is detecting light beyond the redshift ability of say Hubble.

My comment here was about the z=11 one.
It highlights the differences between coordinate systems.

In inertial coordinates, (in Earth's inertial frame) that galaxy cannot move faster than c (per special relativity) and is moving away from us at about 0.98c. The light we see was emitted from about 6.5 billion light years (GLY) away, and it is currently about 13.5 GLY away.
In comoving coordinates (an expanding metric), that same galaxy is currently about 31 GLY away, is receding at about 2.3c (technically a rapidity, not a velocity), and the light that we see now was emitted only about 2.5 GLY proper distance from here — noAxioms

I have heard of GLY as a billion light years. Its not a unit I have ever used.Parsecs and its kilo or mega multiples is more familiar. — universeness

Fine.
In inertial coordinates, the z=11 light was emitted from ~2000 mpc away and the galaxy is currently around 4100 mpc away.
In comoving coordinates, the light was emitted around 750 mpc away and the galaxy is currently around 9500 mpc away.

The new record holder isn't much further away, and the light from it was emitted from even closer than 750 mpc away (proper distance at the time).

Is this 2.3c motion for this 'furthest away galaxy,' not part of the 'eternal inflation' idea?

No, it isn't something specific to eternal inflation. With regular inflation (just a bang, with no inflation still going on anywhere), you still get this same metric. The metric does include dark energy, without which there would be no acceleration of expansion, and the scalefactor would be everywhere negatively curved.

Yeah. GO J-Webb and the re-start of the LHC! Exciting times!

Yea, I seem to be reading articles regularly about new records being broken. Glad it survived the mishap with the 'rock'.

Relatively speaking, how slow is slow and how fast is fast? — magritte

Slow is not even zero.
Nothing is stable at L2, so nothing accumulates there. JWST, once its fuel runs out, will eventually drift away. So the thing that hit it isn't part of the collection that gathers there since there is no such collection.

I read that it requires about 15-100 (depending on your calculations) m/sec/year of delta V to maintain its position there. That's one of the primary reasons for the limit of around 11 years for the JWST lifetime. It cannot be refueled or refurbished like Hubble can.

The furthest object ever seen had been GN-z11 for a long time, but that record had been broken last April or so, finding something at z=13.7 after review of data through several other telescopes.

JWST has now taken the crown, finding something sexily named "CEERS-93316" with a redshift of z=16.6 ±0.1

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.12356.pdf

About the hit to the mirror:

I'm surprised there aren't more frequent micrometeor strikes on satellites and space craft — 180 Proof

Strikes are actually quite common, and returning spacecraft (not even up there that long) are sometimes found with small holes. It was the size of the JWST strike that seemed to be very improbable.

There's a lot of tiny debris that gets caught and swirls about in those gravitational low spots. — magritte

Anything caught in that low spot would be moving very slowly, else it would not be in that low spot. This object was not caught there, nor is the spot particularly attractive to random objects. It could have happened anywhere.

3 … If the astronaut sees a beacon over every sphere, this implies only one sphere ever existed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It suggests it, but it isn’t any kind of deduction.

4. The problem here is that if you accept the perspective of point 3, it follows that there are potentially infinitely many differences that don't make a difference lurking behind apparent reality. You end up with a rapidly inflated ontology of unobservable differences.

You seem to be coming at this from an epistemological approach (which you’re calling discernibility). You’re making statements about what our observer can learn by observation, as opposed to ontological statement: The spheres are in fact not identical despite their identical appearance.

Concerning my point of two truly identical people facing each other in a room:

You can't discern which of you holds your "identity,"

Assuming any meaning to the identity, that’s actually easy to discern. “I” am looking out of my eyes and observing ‘the other guy’. “I” is always just a tautological self reference, and each person can discern his self from the other guy. I asked about a preferred identity, which isn’t necessarily ‘I’. Which is the original identity and which is not, despite their inability to figure it out themselves. The only sane answer is that there isn’t a preferred one.

but you can discern between there being one of you and there being two, because the relationships between your two selves are going to be different from the relationship of just your one self to your self.

By your example of the two spheres above, I don’t think so. How could either know that there isn’t just one person in the room?

Admittedly, it assumes perfect identical classical people and classical deterministic physics. Real physics is neither, so they’ll quickly stop behaving identically, and there’s at least evidence that yes, there isn’t just one person in there. But it still doesn’t clue anybody in as to which one is the ‘original’.

But there is no reason to think cosmic inflation ever ends, which means we have an infinite space.

The model has infinite space even without eternal inflation. I can think of no viable cosmological model with say and ‘edge’ where space ends. Milne model gets close (space is finite), but it ends with a spacetime singularity and there’s nowhere you can be that you can’t see isotropy in all directions.

There are an absolutely gigantic number of these possible states (10^10^123 is an estimate if I recall correctly), but with eternal inflation, there are guaranteed to be other identical versions of you,

Yes, Tegmark talks about identical copies of you at that calculably finite distance from here. But he violates some of his own principles (locality in particular) to arrive at this figure. I have only spoken to him (on a forum) once it wasn’t the sort of topic to bring this issue up. Depending on your definition of ‘to be’ in your statement, there isn’t a copy anywhere despite the infinite space, or there is one far far closer than the figure he gives in his book. I think Tegmark would even agree, but that would sort of destroy his point of using the big number there.

Is it generally taken that diachronic identity, through time, is pragmatic?

Generally yes, at least until it fails, as it does in my examples.

But the tipping point between a thing missing some of its parts and ceasing to exist seems like it has to be necessarily arbitrary.

Not arbitrary. The dog tail dies, but the dog-sans-tail lives on. That’s why it works for dogs but not starfish (where both sides live) and rocks, where a split-rock isn’t obviously separated into original-rock and fragment, especially when the fragment is not just a small percentage.

I took philosophy 101, but it was unfortunately just a chronological slog through "the great minds"

Yes, that’s why I avoided the class. My history classes were taught similarly: Just memorization of names and dates (easy to test) but no treatment of the lessons to be learned, which is not so easy to test. Most said ‘great minds’ did their work pre-relativity and pre-quantum, meaning so much of what they concluded has been shown to be uninformed biases. Know your physics. Then do philosophy.

The sheer size of the post seems to intimidate any quick reply. It isn’t clear from either the top or bottom what the general point is. For what are you arguing?
I remember reading Parfit’s paper on the unimportance of identity. It covered a lot of the same ground that you’re doing, but covered some that you don't.

My common example is a flame. Imagine a Y shaped strip of paper. You light one end and the flame gets to the middle and goes off in both directions. Which is the original flame? Two of them (from different matches) can merge. Which match burned down the house?

An initial paradox the above definition runs into is that of change over time. Take a pet dog. We would like to say it is the same dog over time. However, the old dog has many properties that the puppy does not. A common way around this is to assume that properties are related to a specific time. So the identity of dog D has certain properties at time T, when it is a puppy, and time T' when it is an adult, but the identity is all the properties the dog will have. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But it seems that this definition you’re using is only a pragmatic one: It is useful to assign a sort of legal identity to the various states of dog, so that the various non-identical states combine into one pragmatic identity. This can be attacked, but not so easily with a complex mammal.
So for instance, suppose I ‘borrow’ a friend’s pet starfish. I cut the thing in half and both halves grow back the missing parts and now there’s two of them. I give one back to the friend, who has his pet returned. Or did I? Perhaps I returned the copy and kept the original.
This can be done with humans as well. Given a pair of identical twins., which is the original one that was first conceived, and which is the other one produced by the splitting and separation of the zygote? The pragmatic definition totally fails here, but the legal definition doesn’t much care. It might care which comes out first, but that has nothing to do with the above question.

It would also mean that your car is not the same car after a part is replaced.

Or all of them, one at a time. This is standard Ship-of-Theseus analysis. Can also be done with people since I assure you that you have almost zero of your original atoms, and this presumes that subatomic particles have that pragmatic identity in the first place, which seems unlikely.

Imagine a loved one has been abducted by aliens. The aliens set about reorganizing their brain. They do not add new materials to it, so your loved one's body continues to have the same constitution, it's just that some structures have been rearranged. These rearrangements were done in such a way that your loved one now has an entirely different set of memories, entirely different preferences, and an entirely different personality. ...
Is the person who comes back your loved one? I think most people would say no.

OK, this gets into different kinds of identity than the pragmatic one. The pragmatic one say it is the same person, same reasoning as the clay. But identity of a thing with memory is tied to that memoery. I am the same person that I was as a 5-year-old since I have memories of those times. In that sense, a I would cease to be that person given a case of amnesia.

I’ll raise you a notch. The aliens put false memories of your loved one into a different body, sort of like a brain switch, but without swapping any parts, only by internal rearrangement as you put it. You see your loved one with no memory of you, but you are also presented with another person who has all those memories and very much loves you. Who they are has been swapped. But by the clay definition, they have not.

Another easy example is the Star Trek transporter that scans your body (destructively) and reassembles atoms at the destination. Now you’re there, right? Is that really you? Bones doesn’t think so. It certainly isn’t the same atoms (again, assuming particles have meaningful identity, which they don’t).
Suppose there’s a delay to it, that the new construction is built just before the original is vaporized. Now is it you? Which was you while both existed? What really is the difference, especially given relativity of simultaneity?

Let's say your computer gets a particularly brutal virus.
…
[after reinstall] Your computer now boots up, but with none of the old files. Is it the same computer? Generally, I think most people would say yes.

That’s the same as the alien/loved-one example. Same answer.

Likewise, we tend to think that if our dog has his tail chopped off, our dog still exists and the chopped off tail exists, but is not a dog.

That’s just the nature of dog. Do it with the starfish and the tail is a starfish (at least if it’s big enough). You question should not be if the tail is a dog, but if it is the same dog.

Now for my favorite example, because it is so strange. Imagine a universe containing nothing but two large, completely identical glass spheres sitting two miles apart. Do we have one sphere or two? The two are identical and can only be defined as different by reference to the other identical sphere.

One is identical to the other, not discernible. Add a coordinate system however (which already might exist since there is a concept of ‘miles’ stated)…

Imagine we are an astronaut plopped into this strange universe in the middle of the two spheres.

Now you’re putting an observer in there as well, and that adds more relations. The two are suddenly quite distinct. Your beacon serves the same purpose, adding more relations.

The problem with the absolute standpoint is that:
1. There is no way to tell if you have reached it.
2. Physics suggest that this sort of viewpoint is impossible as only a non-physical entity could aquire a magical "view from nowhere."
3. It is unclear if talking about the existence of things that no observer can observe is coherent.

The ‘view from nowhere’ presumes some sort of objectivity, that the relations involved are secondary, and that the ontology of the things viewed is not a function of the relations between them. Not saying that’s wrong, but there are other interpretations. If the relations matter, then the view from nowhere severs all those relations, and views nothing/everything which are indistinguishable.

For instance, most people presume that sort of pragmatic/memory identity you use above in all your examples, but there are quantum interpretations that destroy that sort of identity, leaving only event-identity: A thing is only identical to itself at one moment in time (and not even that since a moment in time is not unambiguously definable).
So under MWI, ‘world’ split off and in another world I have a broken leg and in this one I don’t. Both of us have an identical history of a day ago: We share the exact same person-state a day ago. So if that prior state is X, and Y is me now and Z is me with the leg issue, then if Y=X and Z=X, then Y=Z and I have and don’t have a broken leg, a contradiction. Therefore X and Y are different identities to satisfy Liebnitz’ Law. There is no persistent idenity of anything by this very non-pragmatic definition. This goes against most people’s personal intuition of having such a persistent identity, and hence considerable resistance to something like MWI, especially if you’re religious and the god needs an identity to judge in the afterlife.
Assuming MWI is wrong and this sort of splitting is fiction, how about your alien and the switched loved-one? Suppose the other person committed some crime before the abduction, and the law can prove it. Now the memories are switched. Which one do you throw in jail? The legal system isn’t set up to handle this case.

My argument is simply that the plethora of paradoxes emerging from the concepts of indiscerniblity and identity, and the counterintuitive solutions to these paradoxes (which still fail to resolve them), shows there is something deeply flawed with how we are thinking of the concept.

I think most paradoxes are just mixing different definitions of identity. I’ve already referenced at least three above. None of them seems ‘the right one’. Identity is a tool, or rather a set of different tools, which often can be used interchangeably, but not always.

I’m wondering about your focus on indiscerniblity. If I create another ‘me’ in a room, facing me, they’re in theory indiscernible. No model is going to pick out a preferred one.

This form of relative identity seems like it would resolve the afformentioned paradoxes.

I got lost in the lower part and did not glean a model from it.

Strange thing that your physicists did not welcome your idea about "magical portals"! — Alkis Piskas

I accepted it because the magic wasn't essential to the point asked by the OP.
One could just put fuel tanks en-route and at speed, waiting for the rocket. The rocket goes out at 10g, runs out of fuel, and there just happens to already be a tank sitting there with matched speed. The rocket refuels, continues on, and just keeps doing that. No magic required, and it doesn't violate any physics to have all these high-speed tanks at just the right spot each time. It's just an engineering problem.

Point is, (as an answer to @TiredThinker ), the rocket is never going to go faster than c relative to say the frame where it was originally stationary no matter how long it keeps doing that.

Astronomical radio telescopes have to be pointed at a source which means radio waves have direction (vector, not scalar) and light belonging to the same family as radio waves should be vector too? — Agent Smith

I never said that vectors could not be used to describe EM waves.
I'm really trying to figure out the relevance of your comment, but cannot.

I said that the local speed of light in a vacuum is constant (c), but that the local velocity of light is not since yes, it can go in any direction. Furthermore, the speed of a specific local pulse of light in said vacuum is always c in any inertial frame, but the velocity of that same pulse of light is frame dependent.

Speed of light is not c necessarily c in non-inertial frames. For example, in the frame of Paris, light near say Neptune might actually come to a stop, and then turn around and go back the way it came for a while. That's because Paris isn't inertial.

We can't see around corners.

Not in flat space, but space isn't flat, and JWST has some very nice pictures that very much show it seeing around corners.

What's your take on two cars of the same model? Would you still say identity of indiscernibles or would you switch to equivalence of indiscernibles? — Agent Smith

... there will be differences (e.g. the VIN number).
These identities lead to consideration of essentialism and natural kinds. "Electron" is a natural kind: all electrons share the same set of properties (except for spatiotemporal location). That set of properties is the essence of electron-ness. Any object possessing that exact set of properties, is necessarily an electron. — Relativist

Sure, but what if there are not differences, since you bring up electrons? Two electrons Bill and Ted enter from opposite directions a shared space and interact, and leave via different trajectories than their incoming one. Which exiting electron is Ted? Do particles have identity? They seem very much not to. A molecule perhaps does, but a molecule is nearly a classical thing. There's no evidence that they have spatiotemporal location until measured, so that doesn't distinguish them. The topic is about identity of particulars, not shared properties of a universal.

I'm not talking about an epistemological distinction. I'm not asking if it's possible to measure which one is Ted. I'm just asking if one of them is in fact Ted, however much Bill has the same properties.

Please tell me why it's speed of light and not velocity of light — Agent Smith

c is a scalar, the so called speed of light, which, given the postulates of relativity, is constant regardless of inertial frame.
Velocity is a vector, and the vector of light is not constant, and is frame dependent.
The same pulse of light might be in the +x direction in one inertial frame and +y in another, and yes, a laser can be pointed in any direction.

Why you ask? I didn't mention velocity at all in the part you quoted.

Ok. How do we know that light can only travel at exactly 1 speed? — TiredThinker

We don't know it. Theory of relativity lists that merely as an assumption (2nd premise of SR). All we know empirically is that the round trip speed of light will be measured to be c in any inertial frame. That doesn't mean it necessarily doesn't have a different speed in +x direction than it does in -x direction. Einstein's theory assumes this, but other theories don't. I know of no theory that doesn't that derived its own generalization of the theory.

Basically only light's lowest energy state represented here?

Light moves at the same speed regardless of energy. Energy of light is frame dependent just like its direction. Lower energy light will be of lower frequency and longer wavelength.
These things being frame dependent isn't new. Energy isn't absolute. Kinetic energy is also frame dependent, and any given solid non-rotating object has zero kinetic energy in its own frame.

I tried to run this by a physics forum but they aren't keen on hypotheticals and thought experiments. — TiredThinker

You need a physics forum that allows speculations. A philosophy site isn't really going to have a lot of members that know their physics.

How close to light speed could this ship go? — TiredThinker

Same speed limit as one that carries its fuel with it, except a lot more efficiently.

A light-sail sort of works this way, with the energy supplied remotely by a 'stationary' source, thus giving hypothetical indefinite thrust. Relative to a local inertial frame, nothing can go as fast as c, but it can get arbitrarily close.
A rail gun is also far more efficient than a rocket, and doesn't require this illegal fuel transfer you suggest.

But one doesn't need the fancy scenario either. Relative to say some muon in the upper atmosphere, I move at nearly light speed, else I'd not be able to reach it before it decayed. No rocket required, which is only needed to change velocity, not to already be at some arbitrary velocity.

Another way of getting around it: Don't use an inertial frame to do your measurements. For instance, relative to the cosmic frame, and per Hubble's law, a galaxy 20 billion light years away is receding from us at around 1.3c (again without benefit of rockets), so all you have to do is be far from something to be moving faster than c relative to it (using cosmological coordinates, not inertial coordinates).

There are other ways to go at a least a bit faster than c utilizing gravitational potential and such, another thing which goes beyond the inertial limits of special relativity.

they found out that, this is where it gets interesting, c = the speed of electromagnetic waves. This led to the obvious conclusion that light was an electromagnetic wave! — Agent Smith

Happens to be that EM waves are light, but it doesn't necessarily follow from the evidence. Gravitational waves also travel locally at c, and yet they're not light.

How did Maxwell measure this speed? It's not like he could sync clocks on different continents. Sagnac effect says that in the frame of Earth's surface, westbound light is faster than eastbound light, such that light sent one way through a fiber optic cable around the world will arrive back at the source at a different time than light sent the other way. This doesn't violate relativity since a non-inertial frame was used to take the measurements.

Imsgine you're doing a calculation on black holes and you end with ∞∞ in your result. — Agent Smith

Yea, but that's not a number, so it doesn't answer your question about the largest number we will ever need.

Are all the infinities that appear in physics calculations ℵ0ℵ0?

They're not 'counts' of things, so the question doesn't apply. Those infinities just mean that the equation fails to describe the physical situtation. So for instance, it take infinite coordinate time for a rock to fall through the event horizon. That just means that this choice of coordinate time is singular there, so it cannot meaningfully describe the rock falling through. It doesn't mean the rock doesn't fall through, or that anything even particularly different happens to it there.

Late to the party as always.

True, numbers are infinite. — Agent Smith

False actually. I cannot think of a single number that is, let alone all of them.

That aside ...

In all likelihood there's a number that would make us go "Yeah, this is it! It all makes sense now!" and that number is probably going to be unimaginably large but finite. — Agent Smith

If that number causes it to all make sense, it probably isn't unimaginably large.

I read somewhere that the observable universe contains roughly 10^80 atoms. That should be a good place to start at least when it comes to matter, oui? — Agent Smith

Perhaps a reasonable place to start when talking about large useful numbers.
Now consider all the possible ways to arrange all those atoms in a given visible universe volume. This gives all the possible states of a visible universe, which is quite useful for positing such navel-gazing concepts as "How far is it to the nearest exact copy of me?". That's a really huge but still useful number, but it starts with the number you gave above.

Tegmark did such a calculation and got a number something like 10^10^28 meters away (quick google search) which is smaller than your random useless number above, but still much bigger than the 10^80 one.

Tegmark doesn't read his own book. A better answer is somewhat closer by if the whole book is taken into consideration.

PS: I couldn't figure out how to do the superscripts like you have in your posts. Maybe it's buried in the terse menu above, but I can't find it.

Are you a p zombie? — hypericin

If your definition of one is that it operates the same way a computer would (a pure physical process, no help from an external acausal entity), then yes.
If your definition involves being distinct from somebody who has a fuller experience that I don't, then probably not. My only argument for it is that I don't see any hard problem, and others seem to see one so clearly. That's evidence of a distinction, not just a different opinion.

Mind you (pun intended), I don't take the intuitive view on almost anything. Our deepest instinctual beliefs are a load of lies, but lies that serve a purpose. I don't think time is something that flows despite all my everyday actions being based on such an assumption. My preferred quantum interpretation is utterly incompatible with a classical human identity. I know my physics well enough to use it to pick a consistent philosophy. I started with the physics and worked to a consistent conclusion, not start with a conclusion and dismiss any physics that gets in the way.

Are you able to visualize? Can you create a picture of something, say a beach, on command in your head? Some people lack this ability entirely. I can do it, but the quality is poor.
Can you imagine sounds? I can do this quite well, with great clarity.

You should pick something that a computer can't do. Can you think of one? These questions seem irrelevant.

None of my imaginings are particularly good enough to mistake from external input, but I occasionally take a while to realize some dream events did not occur. This is because they've already been filed in memory, not because my dreams are particularly real at the time. Most dreams are not thus filed since long term memory is for the most part disabled except in fairly shallow sleep.

How do you think? I think primarily by talking to myself.

I do best literally talking out loud to myself, which is why I work out hard problems while walking/biking away from others. As a kid I would shoot baskets for hours, talking about anything except the activity itself. I think best when I move.

The voices in my head are often of others, sometimes for a whole day. Craig Furguson is a fave.
I suspect my youngest son thinks sans language. Images mostly. I have a hard time recalling things before the age of three because those memories are stored in a different non-verbal language than the ones since.

I suspect the computer would be more consistent than an aging person, but perhaps it might think in new ways as it learns them just like we do.

You completely misunderstood, this is all just background I made up for my hypothetical question. No scientists in question, no such structure has been discovered. — hypericin

OK, that wasn't clear. I retract my attack on the OP since it wasn't a claim, only a proposition.
I suppose you can thus make up any answer you like.
I've had people ask what would happen if the sun suddenly wasn't there, and how long it would take for the Earth's orbit to change. The question has no answer since the posited scenario isn't possible. In a different universe with different rules, sure, you can ask such a question.

In reality I would be very surprised if zombies existed.

I'd be very surprised if somebody wasn't one, so go figure.

The usual is something more like "private internal perception". A camera or a computer can respond behaviorally to it's red sensors in essentially the same way you can to yours. But (we presume) only you have an accompanying subjective experience of red.

I don't see the difference. Sorry, I just don't. I notice you didn't hazzard a line between what likely has it (a dog? frog? jellyfish? non-gloppy-interior alien?). How could such a thing evolve? At some point a non-dualistic parent needs to breed a dualistic offspring, totally discarding all the beneficial functionality of the parents, offloading the task to this presumably more capable external entity. It makes no sense outside of religious creationism, a total denial of science.

The self-contained AI robot has all of it. It's internal perception. Where else is it going to go on? It is first person. Again, nothing else is doing the perception for it.
On the other hand, the perception proposed by the woo folks is
1) external: a sort of remote control of an avatar by the external entity
2) second person, since the avatar is not doing its own perception, sort of like a go-pro on a remote-controlled drone transmitting the images to the controller, and
3) not free willed since unlike the AI robot, the avatar cannot make any of its own choices. That doesn't sound like something making the physical entity more fit.

Sorry for the rant.

This is not really the point of the OP however. — hypericin

The point of the OP was apparently to play what-if games given a hypothetical empirical p-zombie test. But I'm addressing the opening assertion that such a test exists, which it cannot by Chalmers' definition.

Even though behaviorally it makes no difference, subjects might report a difference who have this structure temporarily knocked out.

This is self contradictory. Are you making this up or did the scientists in question actually say this? Did they actually say this structure is responsible for the kind of consciousness that the dualists are talking about?
If the subjects reported noticing a difference, then there's a behavioral difference. If it rendered them 'thoughtless' (your words from your 3rd post), they'd not be able to respond at all.
If it rendered them not sentient, they'd not be able to hear the question asked of them. Even a simple mechanical device is sentient since it can perceive its environment. But you're probably using a loaded definition of sentience.
If it disabled one's entire 'inner experience', you'd think the subject would notice the sudden total lack of experience.

All I see from your reply above (I didn't see any quotes from the article) is that the subject noticed the difference, which indicates that the structure is not entirely vestigial. That's all. Your description of having it disabled does not match that of a subject who suddenly is reft of experience and feelings.

Perhaps there is a lapse of phenomenal memory.

What is phenomenal memory? Memory of a phenomenon? All memory is phenomenal by that definition, except I suppose memory of conclusions reached by thought, such Fermat working out his last theorem.
Were the subjects asked about memory of past experiences? I still have zero quotes from them.

I've never been able to figure out what people have that a machine cannot.
— noAxioms
It's always weird to me when someone makes this claim.

You suggest that some people are zombies, but balk when I suggest I'm probably one of them since I don't see the problem that others do so clearly. Ah, but I'm behaving differently, and true zombies apparently must lie about this sort of thing. I don't do that, so somebody must be wrong.

A digital camera sees red

It does not, no more than does an eyeball. A human with an eye sees red. A device with a camera sees red if it in any way reacts to the data instead of just storing it like a camera does. OK, a smart camera with red-eye editing sees red. I'll buy that.

But it has no experience.

By what definition? It's not human, sure, and that's the usual definition. You have a better one that doesn't so much beg your conclusion?

A quick test is developed for the presence of this structure. You take it, and of course, you are positive. — hypericin

Of course? What if it isn't?
The Nazi's had similar tests, used to justify treating a segment of the population like cattle. The MAGA crowd would love this.

Back to the OP, which seems to have holes.

Scientists make an astonishing discovery: a certain microstructure in the brain, previously believed to be vestigial, is in fact responsible for consciousness. — hypericin

Exactly what evidence was collected to suggest this conclusion? Your implications are that the lack of this kind of consciousness would make no external difference, which leaves little to nothing for the scientists to measure.

I've stated elsewhere that I am one of those lacking in this "consciousnes" (yes, scary air quotes), since I've never been able to figure out what people have that a machine cannot. Sure, I see red, but only by processing the data coming from my red receptors, and any computer with a camera can do that.

A theory that proves everything (E) — Agent Smith

First of all, an explanation is not a proof. You changed the wording from the title.
"God did it" is arguably an explanation, but it isn't presented as a proof of anything. The statement makes absolutely zero predictions, so hardly qualifies as a theory.
An explanation is not a theory. A theory is not a proof. A theorem is a proof, but you rarely see a theorem in physics.

A better example is the long list of various quantum interpretation, which at least do make predictions. Problem is, they all make the exact same predictions, so they too do not qualify as theories, but again only as explanations.

A theory that proves everything (E) has to be compatible with both P and ~P — Agent Smith

Where do you get this nonsense? A theory of everything would make a prediction about everything, but any given prediction would be P or ~P, but not both.

Another example from quantum theory (not interpretations this time). The theory predicts probability of observing certain events. No perfect theory of everything would do better than that. An atom will decay with half-life such and such, but a theory that predicts exactly when a given atom will do so will be quickly falsified,.