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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 03:04pm PT
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AI?
Don't hold your breath or you'll pass out into pure awareness.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 03:33pm PT
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It was an attempt at humor. Did I fail?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 12, 2017 - 05:01pm PT
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The implication is that the likelihood of observers is best calculated not on the "special" attributes that defines an observer (per their attempt) but on "simple" thermodynamic considerations.
But the problem is what constitutes an observer? And what is an observation? Is a camera recording an event automatically, observing that event? Any observation, in the strictest sense, requires a human witness as any mechanical observation not comprehended by the human mind is simply a record to be ingested later into the human consciousness. No doubt machines might react in the manner that safety valves and smoke detectors and computers do but such reactions are hardly the observational comprehensions human beings realize and are ultimately designed to facilitate the interests of humanity. Machines do not gain the satisfaction of their observations and that's because they are not conscious.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 05:07pm PT
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But the problem is what constitutes an observer? And what is an observation?
Kind of have enough semantics going on already...
satisfaction of their observations
Hmmm.....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 06:28pm PT
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they are physicists, so they consider a definition broader than "human" for "observer"
but what they mean is basically that the "observer" is asking the same question: how to calculate the value of the cosmological constant?
This requires that those "observers" know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, and that they have some theoretical interest in why that might be.
Aside from that, they don't presume to define "observer."
I suggest you might try to do the same.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 12, 2017 - 08:01pm PT
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Consciousness must have existed as a potential perhaps even inevitable function of a mediated universe at the instant of its creation. How could it not? The proof being it is here. Evolution is not the final term here; the final term is the physical structure of the universe that allows for some things, including evolution, and disallows for others and that is a sublime mystery.
The bible puts it metaphorically: "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God."
If you read the term word as structure and the word God as the final term you get a fairly brilliant statement of reality.
Further Evidence That God, or Consciousness, or The Universe, or The Word is a Comedian
Once upon a time I looked up the definition of 'supervenience' and forgot it a few seconds later. Now I have looked into 'hermeneutics.'
Hermeneutics began innocently, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It had to do with interpreting texts. Perhaps these texts had been written long ago, or translated from a foreign language. When trying to determine the meaning of the texts, several questions were important:
Who wrote it?
What was it about?
Why was it written?
How was it composed?
When was it written or published?
Where was it written or published?
By what method was it written or published?
Those seem like simple questions, so how did this happen?:
The scope of the more recent discussions on interpretation has become broader, often starting with the question whether human actions are to be viewed as physical phenomena or not and how they should be treated.
The disagreement concerns the issue as to whether it is constitutive for a human action to have meaning or not
from the first paragraphs of the introduction:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/
And the meaning of 'constitutive?'
having the power to establish or give organized existence to something.
Humans are good at that. If there were no non-physical phenomena we would invent them.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 12, 2017 - 08:32pm PT
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I zoned out on "hermeneutics" also. You see the same thing in mathematics where layer upon layer of abstraction and generalization are added to provide research opportunities, especially for PhD students.
If you silently say supervenience one hundred times in the space of five minutes it will become part of your everyday conversation. Adranni Krishnanovase discovered this factoid. It was part of his thesis.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 12, 2017 - 08:47pm PT
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Aside from that, they don't presume to define "observer."
Well that's a shame, since the observations of humans are no doubt different than those of machines. The fundamental difference being the polarities of information and knowledge. Whereas a machine may record information and process that information it remains unaware of same. Awareness of information on the other hand is the unique property of living, conscious beings and in that awareness is the satisfaction of knowing as well as the initial desire to know.
Recorded information requires sentient interpretation in order to become knowledge.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 12, 2017 - 08:48pm PT
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Healyje:
I didn’t mean to call you out specifically, but that’s how it went. The attribution was meant to be broadly shared.
. . . the best places to look for answers to the question lie in the evolutionary adaptations driven by increasingly sophisticated predator / prey relationships . . .
Yeah, I have a problem with that line, too. It seems there is so much that is not knowingly driven by evolutionary adaptations. After the fact, we can stipulate it, but if it’s not in our realm of direct experience, then we do not seem to be talking about the mind we experience. THAT’s the so-called entity that *we are talking about,* no?
Ed: . . . Nothing → Something . . .
Isn’t this something similar to what the physicists are promoting?
Healyje: . . . but that [life] evolved and evolved in an observable manner is not arguable.
A small point: it is. Who observed life evolve?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 09:23pm PT
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Isn’t this something similar to what the physicists are promoting?
perhaps, but I think physicists think that the dichotomy is Everything/Nothing, with the caveat that we don't know everything, and all of that that we don't know is lumped into the nothing. The way we know more things is twofold: 1) we predict with our theories of "everything," and 2) we observe phenomena that were not previously known (and therefore in the "nothing" category).
For instance, in the early days of studies of radioactivity (a "modern" phenomenon) experimental techniques improved sufficiently to determine that the process known as beta decay violated energy conservation.
For instance the neutron decayed to the proton and an electron (which was earlier identified as "β-rays":
n → p + e⁻
if you add up all the energy you find that there's a bunch missing.
Now this new phenomenon of radioactive decay, and the ways of dealing with it quantum mechanically hadn't been entirely worked out, so there was a very real possibility that energy wasn't conserved in this system, opening the door to some truly strange physics.
This was a crisis in physics, for sure, and there wasn't a way out...
Pauli thought about this for a while and came up with a solution, basically, that there was a third particle produced, it was a neutral particle and it had all the necessary attributes to conserve the various quantum mechanical quantities that need to be... and it's existence would solve the energy conservation problem,
n → p + e⁻ + ν
measuring the energy spectrum accurately provided additional information, that is that this new particle, dubbed the neutrino by Fermi (later) had to be very light.
In 1934 Fermi extended this idea with a theory which allowed the transition rates for beta-decay to be calculated. But there was still no observation of the neutrino.
That happened in 1956 when the reaction:
ν + p → n + e⁻
was observed using neutrinos from a radioactive decay in a nuclear reactor.
Before Pauli "Everything" didn't include neutrinos... they came from "nothing" to be included... but not without the details that described how that bit of nothing had to work.
Fermi theory works well, but is subsumed in unification with electrodynamics: electro-weak theory as a part of the "standard model" around 1970.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 09:42pm PT
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Yeah, I have a problem with that line, too. It seems there is so much that is not knowingly driven by evolutionary adaptations. After the fact, we can stipulate it, but if it’s not in our realm of direct experience, then we do not seem to be talking about the mind we experience. THAT’s the so-called entity that *we are talking about,* no?
We're talking about mind and consciousness and by extension its origins and development. Continuous predator / prey interactions have driven an incredible range of adaptations that are plain to see. And I have no doubt it was escalations in predator / prey interactions which drove early adaptations related to consciousness. The balance of power around attack / threat perception, recognition, anticipation and response times by themselves represent a significant driver let alone the myriad of other defensive mechanisms such mimicry and camouflage.
A small point: it is. Who observed life evolve?
"Observable" as in examining the extant species we share the planet with and evolutionary taxonomies of species via numerous means.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 13, 2017 - 10:46am PT
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We're talking about mind and consciousness and by extension its origins and development. Continuous predator / prey interactions have driven an incredible range of adaptations that are plain to see. And I have no doubt it was escalations in predator / prey interactions which drove early adaptations related to consciousness. The balance of power around attack / threat perception, recognition, anticipation and response times by themselves represent a significant driver let alone the myriad of other defensive mechanisms such mimicry and camouflage.
Look, the issue isn't evolutionary processes, the issue is the very real idea of the predicate nature of consciousness as a logical possibility or probability in a mediated physical realm we call the universe. The processes of evolution are a given, the error is to believe evolution is the final term behind the creation of consciousness when evolution is predated by a sympathetic structure allowing for the inevitability of that consciousness. The same, of course, can be said for life and in this sense atheism cannot rely on the notion of a universe of chance manifesting life as simply arbitrary and accidental, since without a very specific and sympathetic order that life cannot be.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 13, 2017 - 11:02am PT
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Sympathetic Structure = Intelligent Design ?
Explain the difference.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 13, 2017 - 11:14am PT
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the issue is the very real idea of the predicate nature of consciousness
We'll have to agree to disagree.
sympathetic structure
You can use different words - god, creation, ID, sympathetic structure, etc but can't really avoid the fact they all mean the same thing.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 13, 2017 - 12:24pm PT
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I'm afraid that what Paul has proposed or rather expressed, as it has been proposed before, will never even be considered here due to the limiting nature of the static world view of the participants. There are some here that conclude it is not even necessary to consider something as nebulous as being beyond physical reality as they perceive it.
We have those pesky things we call the five senses that somehow limit the boundaries of this discussion. This fact need not be judged to have value, but it is. I think this is mostly a modern cultural manifestation that hopefully someday will pass. Science, Philosophy, Religion, and metaphysics among others have all contributed and will continue to contribute to the inexorable progress we make collectively to understand our position in what we see as the universe. Sure we have made great strides, but i think it will pale in comparison to what we still have yet do discover and invent.
Then there is the individual and where they stand in this spectrum of comprehension. Not everyone is going to have or even be interested in the same concepts or methods for understanding. This should be understood as being completely natural, yet we chastise one another for possibly having another viewpoint. This slows things down considerably for the whole but provides a safe haven for the individual who is challenged by the momentary fear of the unknown. But individuals make up the whole and these temporary sanctuaries give the respite needed to move forward into uncertainty. I just wish it wouldn't be so snarky. ;0
Then there is the fact that for most of the people on this planet they are so involved in the their struggles of living a life here that none of this stuff even matters.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 13, 2017 - 12:28pm PT
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Science, Philosophy, Religion, and metaphysics among others have all contributed and will continue to contribute to the inexorable progress we make collectively to understand our position in what we see as the universe. Sure we have made great strides, but i think it will pale in comparison to what we still have yet do discover and invent.
Except for philosophy, religion, and metaphysics...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 13, 2017 - 12:45pm PT
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Thanks eeyonkee, that is great example of my point. You get an "A".
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 13, 2017 - 12:53pm PT
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Shucks Wayno, I'm speechless!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 13, 2017 - 02:10pm PT
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Sympathetic Structure = Intelligent Design ?
Explain the difference.
Intelligent design usually refers to a deity of some interactive sort as constructor of what is.
By sympathetic order I simply meant the obvious, which is a rule laced universe allowing for some results and disallowing others and among those allowed results is consciousness.
Why is there something? Because there can be. Why is there awareness, consciousness, knowing? Because there can be. Why can these things be? You don't necessarily have to invoke the notion of deity to realize the sublime nature of that mystery and the importance it lends to us as human beings.
The act of knowing may be one of the most remarkable aspects of the universe, seems a shame to think less of it.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 13, 2017 - 02:39pm PT
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sublime nature of that mystery and the importance it lends to us as human beings
Or it could all just be entirely random chance and there is no more importance to us as human beings than as to a speck of interstellar dust. You seem in general to push the notion humans are somehow special and important.
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