But you are right about what Laplace had on mind about his Demon.He never mentioned LoE and stuff like that.
That's Hindu's Demon or maybe God :) — dimosthenis9

Exactly, "Hindu's Demon" or God is beyond logic.

Yet when we keep to the logic, it is a limitation because of logic, not just the assumption "that we don't have enough information" that hints that we may have, at least theoretically.

Supposing you are right,even that veto could occure randomly in human brains.And remember neither randomness is on favour of free will. — dimosthenis9

Where it occurs isn't the question, that it occurs is the important point. Remember that with Turing Machines nobody is suggesting they would have free will, but they fall to the same problem. Turing machines cannot compute functions that are not computable by any algorithm.

The important issue here is that we are talking about logical, mathematical limitation here.

As I pointed out before, you are speaking from a position of ignorance. You simply don't know what LD knows. As I said, LD has a "Law of Everything". You do not, yet here you are arguing what would be impossible for LD. — Harry Hindu

And as I pointed, Laplace never talked about and LD or a "Law of Everything" that we don't know, but assumed if some extremely well informed entity could make the extapolation from the present (or past), into the future. Laplace wasn't speaking of any divine power. As I said, what he was talking about is simple "Newtonian" physics extrapolation. That should be clear.

However coming back to your idea of LD having the "Law of Everything":

Let's first discuss this as this is one crucial factor here and should be discussed. Actually you aren't the first to make this argument.

Your argument (and please, do correct me if I'm wrong) is basically the "Black box" argument with LD: we don't know what logic, information and laws which LD is using (that we don't know, which is the Law of Everything. LoE) and hence for LD solving the problem is easy, even if it's not for us.

Ok,

The first question is then: If LD solves this problem using LoE, is then LoE equivalent to our logic that we use? Well, when one situation is that the correct forecast is a forecast that the LD doesn't give, obviously it isn't so, or then we really have understood very wrong basic logic.

I've never denied that determinism does not allow for free will. LD has no free will because it knows everything about everything in the present and can then extrapolate what it will do based on this understanding. — Harry Hindu

Well, now you went ahead of me. Assuming that LD has no free will because it knows everything about everything and can extrapolate the future from the past with (LoE) is definately not something the Laplace had in mind. The point that LD would have no free will is quite a statement.

In fact, this is my point: One can say it that our free will limits this kind of simple extrapolation. Yet is this the correct way to state that theorem? Would it be perhaps better to say that simply there are limitations to what we can compute (or give a direct proof or), because we have free will?

Now I am pro-Putin to the extent that I am anti-being-nuked and Putin hasn't nuked me yet, so he does have that going in his favour as far as I'm concerned. — boethius

If you would just listen to yourself, you would notice how crazy your specifications for being pro-something are. :smirk:

I was talking before the war. — BitconnectCarlos

When?

Prior to 1948? Or prior to the Arab revolt of 1936-1939?

. It is just not the same on the Israeli side. There's anger, of course, but it's not the same. — BitconnectCarlos

I think you should notice how Israel is changing too.

What would an inaccurate forecast be called? A weatherman's forecast is not always accurate. It seems to me that a forecast is simply a mental model of the future in the present. Whether it is accurate or not is a different matter. — Harry Hindu

In the strict sense, a model that is false.

Or simply a model that gives us something true, but it isn't a perfect example of the future.

Regarding "interact", LD is part of the universe it is forecasting so it's actions aren't any different than any other action it needs to account for in making an accurate forecast. — Harry Hindu

So can it say something that it doesn't say? No. Again, when the accurate forecast is the opposite of any forecast the LD gives, it simply cannot give an correct forecast.

The interaction part is when the whole way how such game is played out depends on the forecast, then you cannot just assume everything is fine and dandy and there's just some information missing, but LD has it so it won't be a problem.

With LD the solution would have included where the pilot would turn when they see the flash because the pilot is no different than any other obstacle, conscious or not, that might change the forecast between the moment one makes the forecast and the time the event that was forecasted to happen. — Harry Hindu

Again your not getting the point. That turn hasn't happened yet, it's in the future. The pilot is flying the aircraft ordinarily, because the aircraft hasn't been attacked. He's looking at the potential AA site, but as the pilot observes he's not fired upon, no reason for evasive manuevers. Maybe the site is simply a fake or the gunners simply haven't observed him. The LD giving the firing solution and the firing of the gun only alerts the pilot to make evasive maneuvers. The LD solution is defined from the LD solution itself, you cannot get around it, sorry.

Let's just remember how the LD makes the forecast in general. It knows everything at the present, and it can then extrapolate perhaps one nanosecond at a time to the future to millions of years from now. But this isn't anymore a simple extrapolation: here the correct model of future has to take into consideration the model itself. The LD solution happens partly because of the LD solution. That's circular reasoning. And here we come to the interesting philosophical issue at hand: here the LD has to make a subjective decision. It cannot be just an objective observer here. If it would be, then it wouldn't give any LD solution, the anti-aircraft gun wouldn't be fired and the pilot could perhaps fly aircraft in a straight line through the airspace where the AA gun could reach the aircraft. The gunners would angry at such fire control.

Again, the pilot alters his flight if the aircraft is attacked (sees the muzzle flashes), that happens only after the LD's firing solution, so LD cannot just extrapolate from the present something that isn't yet done.

Here's the most important issue: LD just cannot extrapolate from the past, it has to make a choice when to give the firing solution and what firing solution. That's different what Laplace had in mind. There's many ways to do this, but it isn't simple extrapolation.

This actually is very crucial to our usual way of looking at this: if there's determinism, can there be free will? That's the typical way to look at it. The LD example gives another way to look at this: here the LD has to make a subjective decision because it cannot be just an objective onlooker. And once it does, so, then not all computations can be done as earlier. A lot sure, but not all.

Perhaps in a way our free will simply limits our ability to calculate/prove/extrapolate everything about the future, if it is deterministic.

Would I say that the Palestinians have a wicked culture? Well, I don't know what else to call a culture which openly and proudly teaches its children to kill Israelis. — BitconnectCarlos

You do understand that there's a war going on? And yes, there's plentiful of vitriol and hatred with the Palestinian camp. And similar opinions are plenty in the Jewish side too. I think that many Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

And this isn't something that just happened after October 7th, this is from six years ago:



Far more telling is that many liberals and non-religious Israelis are leaving Israel. That tells quite starkly how attitudes are changing in Israel.

The Geneva convention do prohibit causing environmental damage. Given the political nature of international organizations, it would clearly be no matter to them to e.g. have charged ancient Israel with environmental war crimes while ignoring things like muslims in concentration camps in china. — BitconnectCarlos

The Uighur genocide is actually quite apt example to compare here. First of all, China has simply controlled the area so that there isn't an armed struggle going on. Everything is also done in the name of anti-terrorism, in Uighuria, sorry, Xinjiang it's called Strike Hard Campaign against Terrorism. Then China obviously is a far bigger country with much more effect to retaliate on any country making the case of the obvious (that Uighurs are tried to be assimilated, even destroyed). I think the US can do this and state the obvious truths here, obviously, as China isn't it's ally.

But then again, The Chinese don't declare their intensions in the fashion as Bibi's administration has in this subject. They prefer the usual denial of everything.

and anti-Israeli Leftist sentiment and you get a quite ridiculous judenhass. — schopenhauer1

Actually thinking of Israel started to change with "Peace for Galilee" and the massacres in Shabra and Shatila (done by the Falangists). Then with the Palestinian intifada and the actions in Gaza and in the Westbank. Somehow little boys throwing rocks at armoured vehicles started to change the image of a tiny nation desperately defending itself larger Arab armies.

Yeah, a lot time has gone since Israel was portrayed with Hollywood films like Exodus (from 1960):

Evangelicals are becoming more and more of a minority in the US though. Just look at the abortion debate. — Mr Bee

But these things take time.

Times do change, but perhaps it will take a decade or so.

Then define "interaction" and "forecast". — Harry Hindu

Forecast = an accurate model of future
interaction means simply that LD or someone interacts with something in the universe. This means that an accurate model of the future (the forecast) has to take this action into account.

You're missing a key point of LD, and that is it knows everything about everything with infinite precision. The pilot and the gunner are both part of the everything about everything with infinite precision, so by definition LD would know how the gunner and pilot will react. — Harry Hindu

First of all, when you asked for a real world example, I assumed that kind of example didn't take into account LD.

As I've said, there is absolutely no problem for LD when it isn't making the firing decision. But if it would be assisting the gunner, do notice that the equations isn't what Laplace was talking about: LD has to take into account his own firing decision. After all, the pilot will correct his flight path when he see's the muzzle flash, and then LD has had to give the firing solution. So when does the pilot alter his flight path, when the gun is fired and when LD has made it's firing solution. So the correct forecast is dependent of the forecast made itself.

It's not simple extrapolation anymore, it's more of dynamic model or a game theoretic problem.

But here's the point: the LD having to take it's actions into account already refutes Laplace's idea. Laplace wasn't talking about game theory.

If LD knows everything about everything with infinite precision, then by definition "everything" includes human behaviors. — Harry Hindu

No. that is incorrect. It's not almighty God. It doesn't know the future. It knows only the past.

Let's remember what Laplace actually said:

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past could be present before its eyes.

And the problem isn't knowing human behavior, the problem is taking account of itself. The basic problem is the part "for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain".

What realistic prospect of a Palestinian state are you even talking about? — Tzeentch

I see only two possibilities for a viable functioning Palestinian state to emerge:

a) Israel suffers a military defeat

b) Israel's would face economic stress from sanctions that it has to take the two state solution seriously.

Both a) and b) are unlikely. Option a) is quite out of the question. Not only has Israel the sole nuclear armed state in the region, but it's armed forces dominate others. And with the Iranian missile attack on Israel, we both saw that the US and UK would come to assist Israel, and also that US and others had absolutely no desire to start a war with Iran (the US - Oman backchannel clearly showed this, see here).

And even if university students are showing what future generations will think about Israel's actions, it will take a long time for opinions to change in the US because of the evangelist support will not go away.

Demon can't predict the "veto" that someone could use you mean. — dimosthenis9

Exactly, you got my point. :grin:

What if though the Demon could progress exactly the data at the very same time? - Wouldn't that mean that Demon can indeed have the "past" data( or better the present data also have the prediction effect) and make the calculations at the very same milliseconds?? — dimosthenis9

This is a good argument.

If look at the discussion above with @Harry Hindu, I gave the example of the problem that conventional anti-aircraft artillery (firing dumb rounds) has in estimating a firing solution when trying to hit a fast aircraft at a distance. Missiles are the historical answer (meaning continuous correction of the projectile), but so would be a laser (if they would be powerful and economical enough). Now with a laser, you wouldn't need to anticipate where the aircraft will be, just point out. And obviously you don't have any warning of an incoming laser.

But there's the catch: that isn't interaction.

And even worse: that isn't a forecast.

Explaining something when it happens would be obviously a great thing, but when that earthquake is destroying large parts of Los Angeles, perhaps the most accurate Richter measurement isn't then what people have in mind.

So one could argue that let's simply forget such nonsense of negative self reference. Well, a lot of our forecasts are made that we do adapt to what is going to happen. The problem really is about subjectivity and how it wrecks the objective extrapolations of classical determinism.

Yet I find it very interesting that there's a mathematical or basically logical reasoning to this.

1

Hope you see the point why you could not give an accurate forecast here. And it's likely that people don't bother to make a forecast when the game is told to them. First they'll think it's a 0.5 chance of getting it right or something.

Predicting that someone will write 1s or 2s at the beginning of their posts is not something we normally do.

Think about how I gave examples of sending a spacecraft to Pluto, or predicting where an asteroid will be 100 years from now — Harry Hindu

But this problem does come around in real world implications: anti-aircraft artillery could easily cover the airspace where modern aircraft fly, but they have a problem that cannot be overcome. Once you have made the firing solution, the shell follows a ballistic trajectory to the designated place where the gun was aimed. But with modern speeds the aircraft can change after the course the fire solution has been done and round has been fired. There's no way around the problem, however accurate the targeting radar and the fire control system is. One Finnish fighter pilot told the story that he flew while flying near Kronstadt, he flew in a direct line but immediately made a turn once he saw the muzzle flashes of the AAA on the Soviet line. He wasn't shot down and wasn't even hit by shrapnel.

The historical solution: the surface to air missile. And only few decades ago have SAMs system become so capable that just tight turns at the last minute cannot make the aircraft elude them.

When you think about, the problem is really similar: you can have all the flight data and tracking data of the target aircraft, know the perfomance specs of the aircraft and get a firing solution a the present for the future location some seconds in the future. If the aircraft isn't aware that it's shot and and follows the same line, it likely will get hit. But if the pilot has noticed your AA gun and will change the course after you have fired the artillery projectile, then no matter how accurate your targeting data and fire control was, you will miss or it's just a lucky chance you will hit the aircraft.

It doesn't go away with the assumption that the fire control system "takes into account" the firing solution and the effect on the aircraft. The aircraft can have as a countermeasure a computer calculating what the fire control would give and help the pilot avoid a typical response.

It seems to me that there are many predictions that require your interaction to be correct, as in the case of you predicting that a k will appear on the screen when you type k on the keyboard. — Harry Hindu

Of course, but that's not the issue here!

The issue is if we have classical determinism, let's say Einstein's block Universe, wouldn't then if you assume determinism that if you know everything from the past, then you could extrapolate the future? And if so, is there free will? Well, of course there's already quantum physics telling you can forget, but also there's this simple logical reasoning why such extrapolation isn't possible even with full knowledge...assuming interaction.



The problem here isn't that we don't have all the relevant information, it's that you can use that relevant data even make an extrapolation and then do something else. That is basically negative self reference.

And perhaps this went too much to what I spoke with @dimosthenis9 about the Laplacian idea of determinism.

So anything at all, provided you work for yourself. In Other words, small business owners. I don’t see anything innovative about that, and if all those people are “entrepreneurs,” then the term is useless or redundant. — Mikie

Yet self employed have this thing that they don't have an employer. Or they are their own employer. Bit of a problem for the worker - employer

And it's not useless. If you have a totally new field of industry, obviously at first there isn't any "industry". Usually there are some innovators thinking about something, like well, flying. Only later, they might try to make an enterprise out of it, like the Wright brothers did. Did they end up owning the largest aircraft company? Obviously not. But many of them actually both built their aircraft and flew them. Present day Boeing is a perfect example of how little is there between the modern corporation and the pioneering days of aviation.

For huge corporation it's hard to pick up innovations. Apart from warfare, states and public sectors aren't very apt at looking from totally new ideas. Small companies and the self employed do have a historically important role here. As they have in ordinary stuff too.

You simply said that the entity cannot predict the future but provide no reason as to why it would be impossible. But we know that we can predict the future accurately in many instances, but sometimes we cannot. What creates this distinction if not having access to the proper information or not?

I would need examples of what you are talking about — Harry Hindu

Can you give a real-world example? — Harry Hindu

Thanks for your patience. And good that we agree on a lot of things, so I'll try to give examples.

Here's a real world example:

Let's say I will write in the next post at the start either the number 1 or 2. Now before that you have to make a forecast of the number I will write. It's something that will happen in the future of this thread. To help you I'll give you here how I will choose the number.

If you forecast me saying 1 - > I will write 2
If you forecast me saying 2 - > I will write 1
If you write something else, copy these rules or disregard this - > I will write 1
If you never even answer this thread (in the next week or so) - > I will write 1

Those are all the possible things for you to do, either make a forecast or not or then even disregard this message. And obviously everything depends now on your actions.

Is there a correct model of how things will go and what number I will write. Yes, there obviously is one.

Can you give the correct number? No, my action is based on the negation of your action or on your inaction. Or you have to hack to my account and write as me. Hence you have to have literally control me. So if that's not an option, then there is simply no way to say what would be the correct model of the future. This is the power of negative self reference. Hopefully you can spot the "diagonalization" from the rules that I will implement.

OK, does this go away by you sending a private message which says "I'll make SSU write 1" and then write something else disregarding this silly game example of mine, and then putting me to write 1. Nope, this actually just shows that your private message forecast didn't have an effect on the forecast, which just shows that Laplace's idea is OK when there is no interaction. The interaction part is the problematic thing.

And finally, is there something missing here at the present? Laplace's entity might well know what the correct model is when it isn't making the forecast itself. A what information is missing here, I gave above the rules of how I will start by next response by writing a number.

And if that problem isn't enough real word, I can give you a real world example of this from anti-aircraft gunnery.

But first, let's see what number I'm going to write after your next response. Hope you don't go away for a week... :yawn:

Currently the Russians are insane fascists — Linkey

Well, not all Americans support Trump either. But some do, yes. :smirk:

And Russians have long known to say different things in public and to what you can confide in private to your closest friends that you trust. That's just the system. A lot of Russians abroad are horrified about where Putin has lead the nation. And likely many inside Russia too.

And do notice that the ordinary Russians didn't spontaneously blocking the streets of Moscow and protect their beloved President when Yevgeny Prigozhin tried his march on Moscow.

The insanity is everywhere, and I don't think it will go away until a lot more international and civil wars have killed a lot more people. I can see the US heading for CWII in the very near future. — Vera Mont

That's the typical way people describe Civil Wars: that people simply became insane. But once violence becomes the norm, people too easily adapt to it. And reasonable things like "why cannot we be together and not kill each other" sounds just ridiculously naive and out totally of touch of reality.

Shorter sentences, Schop!

At least they were willing to negotiate about the two state solution, accepted the existence of Israel and even think were totally OK with Israel with the pre-1967 borders. It really was about Gaza and West Bank.

Yet it was back then the Labour party that pushed for the two state solution. Bibi has always been against it. Is Labour coming back? And that's why Netanyahu supported so eagerly Hamas, those Palestinians that are against a negotiated two state solution.

Who knows, but many liberal Israelis are simply opting to leave the nation. Which I think started even before October 7th.

(Dec 7th, 2023) Nearly half a million Israelis have left the country since 7 October, according to data from the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority.

Israel’s Zman magazine reported that 470,000 Israelis have emigrated from Israel and it is not known if they will return at a later point.

Data also shows a significant decline in the number of Jewish immigrants to Israel since the start of October, by about 50 per cent compared to the start of the year.

According to the data, migration to Israel declined by 70 per cent in November compared to previous months of 2023, with 2,000 immigrants arriving in November compared to 4,500 who arrived every month since the start of the year.

What are your examples of all this small, everyday entrepreneurship? — Mikie

Farmers for starters, usually they don't work for a company and are basically self-employed entrepreneurs, even if many times simply they are put into a category of their own. But apart of the non-agricultural field "unincorporated self-employed workers, the three most common industries are professional and business services (22.37 percent), construction (18.46 percent), and education and health services (11.45 percent)" in the US.

So it could be an electrician, a lawyer, a dentist.

It comes out of government spending, mostly the department of defense. — Mikie

Even if I very gladly acknowledge the positive things that comes tech innovation that the defense sponsors, I still argue that a lot comes from entrepreneurs and small companies themselves. Soviet Union with it's central planning wasn't this paradise of innovation.

The work is the taken and packaged nicely, privatized, and makes a few people rich. That’s what is called “entrepreneurship” in the United States. — Mikie

I think you are referring to the case of Wall Street and "Business Angels" giving money to lucrative startups and then huge companies hoarding the patents, knowhow and ideas by compensating few people with enormous sums.

Well, that isn't what ordinary entrepreneurship is about.

It's like if I'd talk about people who play basketball and you're reply would be "Ah, those filthy rich multimillionaires in the NBA who dribble a ball". Well, the vast majority who play basketball don't get any income from it and those who play in the NBA are about 550 players at a time. So why define the millions of people who play basketball by the 550 or so?

In the 8th century BC Assyria attacked Israel and the biblical account has Israel destroying vegetation and wells to deprive the Assyrian army of resources to sustain their siege. Are such "scorched Earth" tactics a war crime? Maybe the ICJ would have convicted them. Or the UN issued a resolution against it. — BitconnectCarlos

Nowhere is it stated that you have to provide food and shelter to an invading enemy.

And you don't have to the 8th Century. When Finns retreated in WW2 from the Red Army, they naturally withdrew all of their civilian population and basically repopulated into areas in Finland that were controlled by Finland. And then, if time, destroyed all the housing. I remember my grandfather telling a story as an officer in WW2, they were ordered to cut down the wheat in the fields and destroy it when withdrawal was inevitable. Some of the soldiers who were farmers took it very sadly such destruction of food, but nothing was to be given to the enemy. If Red Army wouldn't have been stopped where it historically was stopped, the next line of fortifications where on a line just west of my summer place, and old farm. It very likely would have been burnt down by us Finns.

Nobody has said that this was a warcrime. Especially when it meant that the Finnish civilian deaths in WW2 were very low, and there weren't numbers of Finnish women and girls then raped by the Red Army and left in their own misery in the "Workers Paradise". It would have been a little bit different if those people would have been Russians that were waiting for them to be liberated to be then forced into Finland.

Half a million refugees were moved twice from Eastern Finland. During the Winter War 1940:


After repopulation the lost areas and rebuilding the houses, they had to do it again during the War of Continuation in the summer and fall of 1944:


It's a war crime when you move people against their will with the intent of having other people there. After all, Israel has evacuated people from the Lebanese border to Central Israel and other places. Nobody is telling that this is "ethnic cleansing". It's when you deliberately move people away against their will in order for make way for your own population. I think this is quite clear.

The US is just trying to prop Ukraine up until the US election. — boethius

And "Tovarich Trump" will likely disappoint Putin again.

Israel simply needs to go back to the table and offer a solution and stop supporting right-wing agendas in the name of security. — schopenhauer1

Good luck with that. Israeli politics have changed. That's the problem here.

However, I get the sense if you talk to Israelis, even liberal/moderate ones, they would ask you what a moderate Palestinian might be, as they haven't seen one? — schopenhauer1

Correct. They just reject the PLO as their country has been all the time rejecting any Palestinians that have talked about a two state solution. Netanyahu has been quite successful in this.

So great to watch Bibi and his ilk squirm and cry over being left behind by… basically the entire world. — Mikie

Times are changing indeed. I think the day is coming when the "Isreali lobby" will lose it's grip on the discourse about Israel and the US support will not be so unconditional as it is now.

Even if I disagree with Mearsheimer on other points, I think he here makes a good point why this thing is all failing for Israel (from 8 days ago):


The actual lecture 48 minutes, then questions.

All you are doing is just describing another instance of us lacking information about all the causes that lead to a particular effect. — Harry Hindu

No, It's not the lacking information, it's that interaction creates new information/situation. With negative self reference, there really isn't the capability just to extrapolate it from the old information.

Upon reading my post did you not formulate a response — Harry Hindu

Sorry if I misunderstood you. Perhaps I didn't get the point.

Your argument only carries weight if we are talking about the future of the universe as a whole, but not for particular instances of a local system within the universe. A lot of information is irrelevant to making predictions about specific, small-scale events. — Harry Hindu

Obviously we can forecast a wide variety of things by extrapolation. And we can also take into account the effect of our own actions. Yet at many times, we cannot and the factor isn't about us not knowing all the data, it's that us being an actor makes the Laplacian idea of "just having all info & laws" the extrapolation impossible. That's my main point.

I don't understand this. Can you clarify? — Harry Hindu

I'll try, I hope you have the time and the patience to go through it. If I repeat too much, mark then just understood and I go further.

Let's define "the future" as the all the events that really happen. Hence it is incoherent of talking that the "future" changed, the future is what happens.

A correct prediction of "the future" is a model, that is a true model that depicts the future.

Classic determinism starts from this kind of World view that "the future" is this line of events that will happen in the block universe going from the present to the future. Hence everything is determined.

Now Laplaces argument goes that with all information of the past and present and knowledge how things work, an entity can then extrapolate the future precisely, extrapolate the correct model of the future.

What's the problem? The entity being an actor in the universe. A lot of his actions don't have an effect on the future (the Milk Way will collide with Andromeda 4,5 billion years from now or something...), and some of his effects of his actions can be taken into effect. But in some situations, the entity simply cannot predict the future from the way Laplace stated. The extrapolation is simply impossible, yet still, there does exist a "the future" and thus a correct model of the future.

Are you still with me or did I loose you?

What does then this mean. Well, you can say that the future is determined, but that there's a logical reason why we cannot know everything about the future. Why? Because the our actions at the present make a simple (hardly simple, but anyway...) extrapolation from the past information impossible.

Hence we have to use other many times not so exact models to describe the future. NASA engineers and astronomers can still rely basically on Newtonian physics to calculate the future state of the planets, but in some cases it isn't so.

He doesn't actually show that and if he didn't hide his work we could see that he doesn't really show that. He doesn't even claim that, yet what he does claim is a little incoherent. — PL Olcott

:brow:

Gödel is incoherent?

Milne is actually saying that there are some expressions that we know are true yet have no way what-so-ever to know that they are true. If an expression utterly lacks any criterion measure showing that it is true then it remains untrue. — PL Olcott

Interesting to talk about the same issue in two threads at the same time, but anyway...

Ok, let's think about some of these expressions. And no, I haven't seen the actual Milne's paper, so I cannot say more when I have just the one link. (Is it free and obtainable by the net?)

Now, can you give an answer you don't give? It would be illogical if you could. Are there in existence these kind of answers? Obviously yes. What defines them? Obviously the answers that you, @PL Olcott gives.

The above shows just what the problem is when you "Cantor's diagonalization" or basically negative self reference.

So what your problem in using diagonalization?

Just let me know if you know where you think I'm leading here... — schopenhauer1

Be more specific then...

Sure, different types of enemies are dealt with in different ways. I had difficulty extracting any universal principles re: war from the text in the way that a just war theorist would do. — BitconnectCarlos

How about for your own actions in war. As I've stated, abiding the laws of war don't hinder you ability to fight an enemy.

And if you come to the conclusion that "make a desert and call it peace", the genocide-strategy only viable way to defeat the enemy, then I think your objectives are themselves immoral.

Well it is a nice example but the problem isn't if Demon will affect the result.Of course he would do it.But he would have known that will happen indeed even with his interference. — dimosthenis9

But here's the point. The Demon isn't omnipotent. From Laplace's example, it "simply" knows a) everything from the past and b) all the laws of nature. And using a) and b) it should through extrapolation forecast perfectly the future. But now it is an actor! That information a) and b) doesn't have the future effect on what the extrapolation (the forecast) will have. Why? Because you can have diagonalization: negative self reference to the extrapolation.

He would knew that people would react this way suppose he had access to everybody's neurons data. — dimosthenis9

Which is waiting for what the Demon will say. And that's my whole point. You notice that this isn't anymore straight forward extrapolation, because the extrapolation itself defining how the humans do. And if you just assume that well, there's a way for the Demon to get around this, because there obviously is a correct model of what is going to happen. Nope! When that correct model is the opposite (or simply something else) than the forecast that the Demon gives, it's game over. Not a chance!

That's how powerful Cantor's diagonalization or simply negative self reference is.

OK, I see what you mean now. It doesn't follow from the fact that there will be a definite future that we can, or could even in principle, know what that future will be. I agree with that. — Janus

Or don't know, yes.

Laplace's idea that with all information from the past and all the existing laws, one can extrapolate at the present the future. Now this would be totally correct, if the extrapolation wouldn't itself have an effect. Some occasions there's no effect, some occasions the effect can be taken into account. But unfortunately in one occasion (at least) it's impossible.

And I think here is still some very basic logical issue that mathematics, and basically philosophy has to get right. Because a typical philosophical question now is that if there's complete determinism, do we have free will? Or if we have free will, is there then determinism?

Why is this important? Well, because you have missing rule in logic/math to tell you why there separate issues.

I think that mathematics and logic has an clear answer to this. The problem now is we have just the paradoxes (Russell etc) and then the undecidability results showing that math is "incomplete". Those don't explain just what is this realm of non-computable math, which should be defined. My working thesis is that all that non-computable math, those Gödel numbers that are true but unprovable, are defined with the negative self-reference.

Perhaps it's for the this Forum to come up with it. :razz:

Remember we suppose the demon has available all the data at any second and has the ability to make the calculations also at the same time. — dimosthenis9

Yes, yet the Demon a) doesn't control everything and b) has to give a prediction.

Besides, you should note just how the Demon makes a computation and uses extrapolation. This is really a simple matter of logic. You cannot compute something which is illogical and then declare it to be mathematically truthful.

Well i m not really sure why the Demon shouldn't interact with us as to be able to predict the future.Can you explain it a little more? — dimosthenis9

Because when it interacts, it is the subject. It's interaction effects what it should be looking objectively, that is the whole idea what Laplace was thinking about. Now it's the subject.

And if you think this isn't a problem, well, in physics the measurement effecting what is to be measured does complicate things.

I'll give you another example:

The Demon is interviewed in the media and ALL people really believe that it indeed has perfect knowledge of everything in the past and all the laws of nature etc. (because the Demon predicted a strong earthquake and got it's timing and location spot on and many lives were saved). So one person asks the Demon on live tv/radio: "What are the next lottery winning numbers tomorrow and how much will be won? Well, let's assume the Demon knows what the winning numbers will be, but how does he define how much will be won by the winners? That winning pot is divided by all those who bet on the winning numbers, and everybody believes that he is right, there's a problem. Let's say the lottery ticket costs 1 dollar and the winning pot is 10 million. Now there are 15 million listening to the broadcast and if everybody would pick the Demon's winning lottery number, when the winning lottery is only 10 million, then they would lose because the 66 cents that they would win doesn't go over the 1 dollar price of the lottery line.

Now, you might say that there's some Nash equilibrium which will happen, but the real problem is that here obviously what the Demon says affects what will happen and this isn't what Laplace had in mind with his extrapolations. It's not something that you can simply extrapolate from the past: what the Demon says, actually does have an effect.

Or do you think it's mathematically reasonable to say this statement is true ...because I say so?

Well imagine that the Demon at the very next second that he will tell the person what to do the data will change.
And according to the new data that supposingly the Demon would have ,he could predict that the person would do the opposite thing just because he would want to prove the Demon wrong. — dimosthenis9

Nope. Doesn't go like that. If the Demon predicts that it's the opposite, then the person does what the prediction says, hence the Demon was wrong in it's forecast. The simple fact is that you or the Demon cannot say what you don't say. Even in a game theoretic model this is totally clear.

D's forecast: A The person actually does: not A
D's forecast: not A The person actually does: A
D's forecast: something else or no forecast The person actually does: A

From the above you can see it's impossible for the Demon to give the forecast.

Where? — BitconnectCarlos

IN A LOT OF PLACES!!! In the Old Testament, where not? should be the question. In the Old Testament, not a forgiving peacenik of a Dad like in the teachings of Jesus C.

But perhaps the best example should be this one that is actually quite current:

(1 Samuel 15) And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. 2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”

That's from the Christian Holy Bible. But of course as we are talking about Abrahamic religions, then it's no wonder that a certain Israeli Prime minister referred to the same thing:

It seems here that Nazis and Imperial Japan had it coming, even though Japan only killed 2,403 people as far as attacking Americans. — schopenhauer1

Again, do not convieniently forget the colony of the US, the Philippines. It wasn't just an attack on Pearl Harbour, it was also the Japanese taking over the Philippines, which started on the 8th of December (one day after). Just in the Bataan Death march some 5000 to perhaps 18000 POWs were killed, many from the Continental US too. So it wasn't just Pearl Harbour, but I can understand that the US isn't keen to make WW2 to be a war of it defending it's colonies (especially when the Philippines was given independence after the war).

But the millions lost aren't presumably considered a "war crime". How can you square that circle? — schopenhauer1

By the fact that the victors of wars lay down the post-war laws. As I've stated earlier, the commander of the RAF Bomber command has acknowledged that if the UK would have lost the war, he would have been convicted of war crimes.

And now you have that "squaring of the circle" done by the ICC, when they put warrants for warcrimes at both Israeli and Hamas leadership. People aren't happy about that, when they support one side against another.

And what about pre-emptive self-defence. As usual, it's not so simple in real life. — Benkei

Yes, life is so.

A pre-emptive attack is quite an oxymoron. Just like a suprise pre-emptive nuclear strike that reaches total strategic surprise and destroys the other ones nuclear deterrence. Have fun trying to establish afterwards that the other side had the real intent to start a nuclear war and this was the only way...

Well sure we cannot know it.But the really question is,could Laplace's Demon know it indeed? — dimosthenis9

Only if he doesn't interact with us, he can know. Then it is really that computable extrapolation with total information of the past on forward. The Demon simply cannot interact with us.

And since he cannot interact, it really is a fictional character to us. Or at least doesn't give us any information. Because just think of it when a person comes to the Demon and asks what should he or she do? Well, how does the Demon extrapolate from the facts the future when the future likely depends on the extrapolation? That's circular reasoning. And what if the person doesn't like what the Demon says and does the very opposite? Then the Demon obviously cannot say the future what the person will do, because it will be the opposite (hence wrong) what the Demon says.

We do not have access to all the information necessary to say with certainty why any particular event happens. — Harry Hindu

Not even so. Even if you have all the information, it still isn't possible. Let me explain:

Even if you would have all the information necessary to say with certainty why any particular event happens, that doesn't mean you can say the what will happen. You are part of the universe. You saying something can effect what is going to happen. Hence you saying anything, doing anything, can have an effect on what you ought to forecast. And what about when the future depends totally on what the forecast you give about it? You basically have the possibility of negative self reference and you cannot overcome that law of logic: you cannot say what you don't say.

Possibilities and probabilities are just ideas in the present moment. — Harry Hindu

Or I would say a great way make a useful model of the future what we cannot exactly know, especially many times when we do have this kind of interaction going on.

They do not exist apart from the process of our making some decision in the present moment. — Harry Hindu

So, cannot we then define the future to be what really will happen? We can, but that doesn't help us much. Far better models perhaps can be the idea of a multiverse where we end up in some distinct reality.

This is all very well, but the question that remains is that one concerning subjectivity. At what point does the machine suddenly become self-aware? — Nemo2124

You should first answer, when do people or animals become self-aware? Is there an universal agreement how this happens?

I don't think it "goes against logic", rather it is one logically possible way we can imagine things being. — Janus

Perhaps I should have been more precise: We can assume that there's the future that will certainly happen. But it is illogical then to think that we, being part of the universe and actors in the universe, could then now this future, because there is a correct model of the future. It's similar basically to the measurement problem.

OK, these all are undecidability results and hence are quite similar.
Yet these findings aren't a repeat finding of a paradox. As also @tim wood stated, what Gödel shows is that there's a true, but unprovable sentences.

Referring to the https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/#Max about truthmakers, it seems that you make a similar argument like Rodriguez-Pereyra (2006c) to the refutation of Milne (2005). Hence you want to refer to the Liar Paradox here. (According to Rodriguez-Pereyra, because (M) is akin to the Liar sentence there’s no reason to suppose that (M) is meaningful either).

Or as you say in the OP:

Finite string expressions that are not truth-bearers are rejected
as a type mismatch error for every formal system of bivalent logic. — PL Olcott

Yet Milne has the gist of this: the problem here is that there indeed are true, but unprovable truths. It really doesn't go away by thinking that forbidding paradoxes, forbidding negative self reference or diagonalization and then assuming that everything can be done and all is well.

Hence if the maximalist view is that "For every truth, then there must be something in the world that makes it true" it still holds, with the simple caveat: yet not all of these truths can be proven to be true.

Hopefully you get what I'm trying to say here.

First off, what are we admitting to, when we say that (at least some) wars can be legitimate? — schopenhauer1

A legitimate war is if you are attacked, you can justifiably defend yourself. Even the Old Testament in the Bible says so (not the New Testament, and not surprisingly). Nobody can say that you were the aggressor, however times the aggressor will declare "that he was forced to do it". Many would also see as legitimate an intervention to some heinous genocide or civil war. Like Vietnam isn't accused by the World community in ending Pol Pot's reign of terror.

Then, if you don't do warcrimes, you don't have any skeletons in the closet (literally...) that you try to hide away. You can have a clear consciousness about the war and that you fought in it.

Presumably war isn't a gentleman's game of backgammon or chess.. — schopenhauer1

Well, for example in the 19th Century when the British forces fought the Crimean war in Finland, it was a gentleman's war. Their behaviour of the Royal Navy was quite "Victorian" in a way. In the university I studied the Crimean war in Finland and the stories and events show a reality of behaviour that simply wouldn't happen today. It's like from another world, actually. And that shows how low we as humanity have gone. Perhaps when faced "savages" that did the hideous things to those soldiers captured, the British Armed Forces behaved in a different manner, but when faced with other Europeans in war, the meeting was very different. But who cares today about red crosses or white negotiations flags. It's all just naive stupidities in war. And that's the problem.

But then, again, what is war? What is war when it means having to make Nazi Germany totally surrender? What is war in making Japan totally surrender? Japan only killed 2,403 people in Pearl Harbor, but it resulted in millions of Japanese deaths.. for example. — schopenhauer1

Again I would recommend reading Clausewitz.

When attacking the US at Pearl Harbour, Japan likely assumed that the US "would see" the writing on the wall and simply negotiate some peace with Japan and leave it alone, which the Japanese would have gladly accepted. Yet (domestic) politics in the US didn't go that way. Just as mr Hitler didn't see what a huge error he made with declaring a war with the US.

But hey, Americans were simply lazy racists with an army smaller the size of Belgium, so what kind of threat could they be? That was the idea of the US that the Nazis had.

Indeed. There is no such thing as a future that "really will" or "is supposed to" happen. We only have what comes to be. Planning to do something is not establishing a future state, and changing that plan is not changing the future. — Patterner

Exactly.

And here's what people don't get: the future that really will happen is out of bounds from us, because we have an effect on what the future is.

Yes, you can argue that there is exactly a way that things happened in history (in this dimension of the multiverse or whatever you think reality is) and hence there will be exactly one future that will happen. This is simply meaningless to us as we cannot know it. It simply goes against logic.

It is much simpler to see what Tarski did, Gödel hid the missing inference steps
behind Gödel numbers and diagonalization.

This is Tarski's formalized Liar Paradox
x ∉ True if and only if p
where the symbol 'p' represents the whole sentence x
https://liarparadox.org/Tarski_275_276.pdf

This is stated more simply as LP := ~True(L ,LP)

Tarski found out that ~True(L, LP) is true (in his meta theory) and
True(L,LP) is not provable in his theory and this got him confused.

This sentence is not true: "This sentence is not true" is true because
"This sentence is not true" is not true. — PL Olcott

Even if I'm just an amateur on these issues, I think here's a mistake.

Gödel isn't just coming up with the Liar paradox and "hiding" the missing inference steps behind Gödel numbers and diagonalization. Many people do think that Gödel has fallen into the trap of self reference and is talking about basically the paradox, but he isn't.

He is talking about provability and makes a formal mathematical statement not of "this sentence is not true", but "this sentence is unprovable" or "the sentence (s) in unprovable". It isn't a paradox as the statement simply is unprovable, not illogical. While proving or giving a proof in mathematics is very close and usually the same thing to computation, then it's no wonder that the undecidability results are so close to each other (Gödel, Turing, Tarski).

And they aren't confused. Their findings aren't something that just can be assume away, it simply would be illogical to do that.

For myself the clearest example of this diagonalization is for you to say something that you don't say. Now, does there exist something that you don't ever say? Of course! But simply you cannot say it. It doesn't go away by assumption.