This is a false equivalence. — InPitzotl

Nope. All sorts of funny competing hypotheses are consistent with the facts, including that of invisible flying unicorns. But quite often, one of them competing hypotheses is simpler than the others... and it's often the one that assumes the less.

If we start doubting the exhaustiveness of our observations, we are not going to make any progress. A — simeonz

By this precept, the indeterminist nature of the universe is proven by the double slit experiment.

Absurdism claims that the universe does not conform to analytical comprehension. — simeonz

I agree that it does not NECESSARILY conform to OUR analytical comprehension. That's an assumption that it does. But even if it is a false assumption, it does not mean the universe is ontologically absurd. It just looks that way to us.

the many worlds are not assumed, they are concluded. — InPitzotl

Concluded from an assumption, therefore assumed as well. This is nitpicking.

That question presumes that there's an "authentic" identity, and that the issue is to get the "authentic" one to be in the universe you like. I question that underlying presumption. — InPitzotl

And I question the presumption that a new me is born everytime an electron in me changes its orbit. Call me crazy.

Asking if a scientific theory is testable is standard procedure. Whether or not you like the theory, if the MWI is not testable, it falls beyond the realm of empirical science.

the data is perfectly consistent with both views. — InPitzotl

Of course. It's also consistent with the existence of invisible flying unicorns.

Not sure what you mean by Absurdism. Camus? I don't think the world is absurd at all, personally.

What I mean by factual determinism is the experience, or at least the conjecture, that more then one possible outcome can arise from a given circumstance. — simeonz

That's indeed the idea.

Both [determinism and indeterminism] are stating something concrete that is subject to sense experience. — simeonz

How do you propose to test the above conjecture that more then one possible outcome can arise from a given circumstance? It's not so easy, because if you demonstrate empirically that two outcomes can arise from the same initial conditions, a determinist can always say that you must not have exhaustively and perfectly replicated the initial conditions.

The universe appears indeterministic to mainstream science and to common sense. But we can't check. We don't have another universe, that we could watch in fast forward to check that everything always happens the same manner as it did the first time around...

So to me, the question is metaphysical. It matters not. It's like invisible unicorns, all-knowing daemons and hidden variables. Maybe the gods know what the future holds, or maybe not... We certainly don't know. We want to know, and it's a good idea to try to know what the future holds. But we also sense confusingly that we will forever be unable to predict the future, if only because any advanced prediction of a certain outcome may change our response to the situation that would give rise to this outcome, and thus change the outcome itself. Predictions of the future affect the future...

It has not yet totally ruled out some invisible unicorn of determinism, hiding behind the empirical data. That may be impossible to do (although Bell tried). — Olivier5

Come to think of it, aren't hidden variables the last refuge of metaphysics?

Science has not decided on this issue. — InPitzotl

It has not yet totally ruled out some invisible unicorn of determinism, hiding behind the empirical data. That may be impossible to do (although Bell tried). But scientists, in their day to day work, use non-determinist models and tools all the time.

The MWI is a ridiculously expensive hypothesis. It assumes the existence of an infinity of worlds, just for the purpose of denying any shred of hazard in the only world we know of. It's pushing risk intolerance a little to far in my view.

The degree to which the MWI is actually usable, practically speaking, in offering greater control is highly debatable. How do you control which universe you end up in? I want to be in the universe where I win the lottery. Can that be arranged by a kind MWI proponent? If it can't, what good is a formally deterministic theory which gives us no additional control? How is it even testable?

I'd rather go where the data lead me: there is only one world that we know of, and undetermined events happens in it.

And indeterminism makes enormous claims. Like the idea that things can happen for no reason. — khaled

Nope. Just because events aren't predetermined, doesn't imply that they happen for no reason. They just happen for reasons that are not predetermined.

When an atom decays, there's presumably a reason for it, and yet no individual decay event is predetermined to happen during any specific time period.

Likewise I cannot predict precisely when and how I will die, yet I know that I will, and that it'll be for some reason or another...

Which of those are your private sensation of 'pain'? How does the, let's say couple of hundred, occasions where you see the word 'pain' being used tell you which of those several million sensations are your 'pain', and which are unrelated? — Isaac

What are you trying to do here, Isaac? What's the point of this line of questioning? Understand how people learn a language?

The term "incompatible" is too strong here. Two radically different explanations of the same thing can coexist and represent two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

The resaoning concerning human behavior always involves emotions, involves what concerns us; computers have no concerns. — Janus

Agreed.

no two phones are identical, — Marchesk

Indeed, and people personalize their phones and treat them as private. That's why they put passwords on them...

So the rational thing to do, if you appeal to science, is to likewise remain undecided. — InPitzotl

Except determinism makes enormous claims, like the idea that this post I am now writing was predetermined since the Big Bang. When you make such a gigantic claim, you got the burden of proof.

Beside, science has decided on this issue. Modern science is undeterministic, on the whole.

Northern Italians dislike Southern Italians, Southern Italians look down upon those Italians further south, and all look down upon Sicilians. — Ciceronianus the White

Yes. Italians had no colonial empire but Sicily and Sardinia were treated as colonies, with their inhabitant considered to be of African descent or admixture, and therefore atavic, inferior, almost bestial.

We're all the negro of someone.

That's true, but some things such as human behavior are understood in terms of reasons and other things such as physical processes are understood in terms of mechanical causes. I am saying the two paradigmatic ways of explanation are incompatible not contradictory. — Janus

I think they are compatible, eg a computer playing chess is applying a limited form of reason (rules and logical inferences) written down on silicon. In fact, reason seems to be the easiest thing to communicate to computers, as compared to emotions. We understand reason, it's possible to formalize it into 0 and 1, but emotions are the big enigma to me.

Yes, I haven't been arguing that the mind is non-physical in any substantive sense — Janus

Indeed. If we go by the definition of objective, physical reality 'that which doesn't go away when you want it to', 'that which exists, whether you like it or not', then the mind fits the description. One cannot stop to think at will. One cannot make one's mind 'blank'. Sometimes it's even hard to find sleep. And those of us who would want to become philosophical zombies cannot actually do so.

Okay, not super deep but there's an effort.


Téléphone - Le Temps (Time)

You clever sand grain watching your friends
Fall one by one to the bottom of the hourglass
Cock-sure sand grain that watches others go by
Don't forget to forget that you too will pass

The glass tunnel
That opens under your feet
Will make you meet your future, your past
Because Time, He doesn't wait
No Time is that very moment
Time, He doesn't exist, no
Time is what you will do with it
Take it!

Baby sand grain who makes big sand castles
With the wet sand left over from your past
You are waiting for the reigning hand that will turn the hourglass over
You wait, you still think you're on the right side

The glass tunnel
That opens under your feet
Will make you forget your future, your past.
Time doesn't wait
No, Time is that moment
Time does not exist
No no no
Time is what you will do with it

And the minutes pass and the seconds pass
This song needs to end, but will never end
'Cause this grain that don't fall could very well be you

Missing links such as the ribozyme have been discovered, hybrids of protein and RNA segments that catalyze their own replicative processes. — Enrique

Indeed, the best hypothesis for abiogenesis seems to be the RNA world. It solves the chicken-and-egg problem in the DNA-proteins relationship characteristic of cellular life. Cellular life would come from a different, more elemental form of "molecular life", which prions and ribosomes would be remnants of. Where and when this RNA world happened is of course a question. The time between earth formation and the first proofs of photosynthesis on earth is a few hundred million years, perhaps too short for the slow development of cellular life from an RNA soup. Maybe the RNA world was not born on earth.

Yes, I haven't been arguing that the mind is non-physical in any substantive sense — Janus

Okay but then, there is no contradiction between your two paradigms. The mind is just one of many things that matter, and it is free to the exact extent that it is self-determined.

Oh. My bad then.

If you were not a dualist just say so sooner. — khaled

Told you that you were not paying attention...

Problem is when they also think that the mind is completely divorced from physical systems. That it’s entirely non-physical. — khaled

My point entirely: the mind must be physical in some way. It exists, it works, it does things.

Something about minds being described as forces makes people cringe for some reason. — khaled

I'd gladly talk to those people, if they ever come forward, and review those reasons, if they are ever provided. In the meantime, you'd agree with me that many other people think of their mind as a kind of captain of their body. Hence they assume minds have causal force.

To me the most obvious thing is that we are free and morally responsible. That cannot be reconciled with the idea that our decisions are wholly determined by physical processes regardless of whether those physical processes are themselves deterministic or random. — Janus

Yes, if 'physical' means 'non-mental', as is often conceived including by Khaled. But if one considers the mind itself as a cause, as a force in the world, then I think it follows that mental events ought to be regarded as 'physical'. They must have some materiality. The mind maters.

Inability to predict is not lack of determinism. It's lack of sufficient modelling accuracy. — Isaac

A model which does not predict individual events, but instead predicts the aggregate outcome of many events in a statistical manner, is not a determinist model. Period. Now you can say that it does not preclude some deeper, unknown deterministic outcome pathways, but that's like saying that unicorns may exist, but they are invisible to us.

Lack of determinism would need to propose a randomising mechanism.

Err... Quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, what else?

What's the undeterministic theory of active transport across a cell membrane? — Isaac

It's the theories you know of, I guess. None of them pretends that one can always predict any and all active transport.

So how have you come to the conclusion you have, without any contributory evidence? — Isaac

Because I studied physics, chemistry and biology, and those foundational sciences are currently underterministic.

Now, if you can prove that modern neurology is on the whole deterministic, please do.

Oh, I didn't know that. So what's the non-deterministic account of decision-making in neurological terms? — Isaac

You tell me, if one day you manage to peek outside your religious blinders.

Janus already explained that. As usual, you don't pay attention.

In what way 'misplaced'? — Isaac

I totally agree with Janus. The belief in determinism is religious in nature. It's about not allowing your gods to play dice. Modern science has got passed this belief, and is resolutely undeterministic.

Scientific determinism is outdated, and believing in it is therefore misplaced.

So you and your community are oppressed by a state and business apparatus controlled by Whites? — 180 Proof

Where I live, the state and business apparatus is controlled by Italians, who I suppose are white, most of them in government anyway. Many Italians are casually racist (including between themselves, ie regional sentiments are strong) but the level of racial hatred is not as high as in the US. There isn't much history in terms of ideological racism in Italy; it's not engrained in politics like it is in many other places. Even Mussolini was not much of a racist.

Here the cops do not beat up people for the fun of it, like in the US, or France for that matter. So indeed, I am not feeling oppressed. When an Italian cop stops me, I don't fear for my life, even though I'm not Italian, and I realize that's a blessing.

Tx. I'm trying.

Sure, if that works for you. Me, I'm a Non-Black anti-racist.

Are you equating objective with truthful? — frank

More as ‘unbiased, fair in appreciating the available evidence.’

But that direction not, presumably, towards just maximum possible approximation to infinite information and complete truth? That doesn't seem to be what people are driving at — bongo fury

It’s exactly what people are driving at, in science, journalism, justice and scores of other fields where it is really important to try your best at being objective.

So what? There's no structure to things? Things are whatever we want them to be? Is that what you and this guy Goodman are saying?
— Olivier5

I think what he is saying is that good analysis of intersubjective representations on a non-cosmic scale is always hobbled by reasoning about their possible foundations on a cosmic scale. I.e. about, usually, objectivity. — bongo fury

Only if one obsesses with attaining perfect objectivity. As a beakon or azimuth, a goal that will never be attained but nevertheless indicates a worthy direction to take, objectivity is not a problem but a solution to a problem.

I mean to say that another possible way to define yourself in opposition to a ‘white’ racist is as anti-racist, rather than as ‘non-white’. I’d be worried about validating racial discourse.

But there is nothing inherently wrong with recognizing the color of the skin, or those correlations, as long as it not weaponized to diminish someone. — simeonz

It’s never actually measured objectively, though. It’s not like people’s actual skin color or melanine density in the epiderm was recorded by some optic device.

In order to effectively fight your enemy you must name him (re: White Nationalists) and thereby rename yourself in contrast (re: Non-White Citizens et al). Problematic, no doubt, yet indispensable for strategic thinking in liberation-social justice struggles. — 180 Proof

There are also 'white' citizens who are not white supremacists. It seems counter-productive to mistake them for the enemy, if they aren't.

What I am against is the idea that any skin color recognition is inherently racist and needs to be censored. — simeonz

Skin color is only one tiny factor here, in classifying people between 'white' and 'black'. Otherwise most people on earth would be classified 'grey' or 'in-between' or something like that.

Yes of course we are all colored. 'White' people are light brown / pink. Even if they were technically white, white is also a color.

-----

Two Jewish folks had a dispute about this issue one day, and decided to ask their rabbi about it. They asked him: "Rabbi, is black a color?" The rabbi answered: "Yes of course, black is a color." One of the guys asked again: "Okay but is white a color?" Again the rabbi said "Yes, white is also a color".

Then the other guy said: "You see? I did sell you a color TV."

Materialists believing in telepathy... You can't beat this place for entertainment. :-)

Telepathy
(from the Greek τῆλε, tele meaning "distant" and πάθος/-πάθεια, pathos or -patheia meaning "feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience")
The purported vicarious transmission of information from one person to another without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction.

We have to say of him, not that he has no experience of red (I am correcting myself here), but that his experience of red and his experience of green are 'the same'. So what I would like to suggest, is that this is a general principle of experience, — unenlightened

:up:

epiphenomena — Isaac

are a hoax. They do not exist.