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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Well, mainly because I consider gods of all stripes to be figments of human imagination.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Does that mean that you consider the idea of intelligence somewhere in the universe which is superior to ours, to also be fiction?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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The assumption of a higher intelligence is tied to the experience of a continuum of intelligence in animals here on earth.
Yes.
Speculation of a higher intelligence begs the question how high?
Yes.
How have you not opened the door to the expectation or equally valid speculation/assumption of the existence of God?
You have. Opened the door.***
So maybe at some point in the future, near or far, we'll actually see some evidence.
I for one would have a shitload of questions for this Zeus.
*** For "speculation" especially.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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what is the upper limit of intelligence
Consider this comparison: people in a mag-lev train go zipping past a cat. Are the people in the train going to try to explain to the cat how the train works?
How are you, as a human, going to form any definite idea about what a significantly superior intelligence would be like? What would be its needs and goals?
What would your God be like?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan: Does that mean that you consider the idea of intelligence somewhere in the universe which is superior to ours, to also be fiction?
I wouldn't necessarily put limits on biological intelligence as savants, synesthetes, echolocators, and folks who do extreme memory training exhibit various forms of 'advanced' capabilities merely by changing up a few bits of wiring. Also, a culture which managed to survive itself for, say a couple of hundred thousand years, could draw upon significant knowledge and technology (and probably would have figured out what is mind). They could also have gone the route of computational augmentation.
But that still excludes all forms of magic.
I have no particular reason to doubt that the universe is filled with a smorgasbord of intelligent civilizations; who knows where we might lie on that bell curve of intelligence.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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But that still excludes all forms of magic.
The whole point is that it's not magic. Who said anything about magic? The point is simply that our own familiarity with degrees of intelligence implies a continuum on which we may find intelligences far greater than our own and doesn't that also imply the possibility of what could only be described as deity? To say otherwise is to give yourself over to another kind of faith as it ignores what you know with certainty when you study an earthworm.
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WBraun
climber
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folks who do extreme memory training exhibit various forms of 'advanced' capabilities merely by changing up a few bits of wiring
That has nothing at all to do with intelligence.
Intelligence comes from above and beyond the material plane.
The more you give the more you get.
There is NO limit to intelligence period.
The only limit is your own illusion that you can do it independently.
The living entity is eternally part parcel of the whole intelligence and eternally subordinate to that whole intelligence which also has personality and is NOT impersonal.
The gross materialists are always in poor fund of knowledge with their incessant clueless guessing .....
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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QuoteWell, mainly because I consider gods of all stripes to be figments of human imagination. Here
Jules Verne had figments of imagination that latter became realities.
Panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories: minds in a world of mind.
Einstein practiced thought experiments aka day dreaming.
Greeks practiced thought experiments but not empiricism.
JH:Religion has its roots in fear of the unknown.
I have feeling that my following idea has already been expressed, albeit, more succinctly. If someone could throw me a bone on this I would appreciate it. Thank you.
My idea is that the fear/awe of our cave dwelling ancestors was first represented by the paintings they made on their cave walls. After they mastered killing the animals that were trying to kill them their psyche needed to fill the void. This may be when spirits entered the picture. Some tribes ate the body parts of their victims to gain their life force spirit. It may also be physiological healthy that humans have their fear/awe receptors stimulated. As philosophy/science advanced many natural phenomena/spirits were being explained, but the necessity of being in awe remained in the Psyche. Science, as well as religion, strikes awe in humans.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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paul roehl: The whole point is that it's not magic. Who said anything about magic?
I did and I would say just the opposite, that gods are all about very imaginative magic.
...also imply the possibility of what could only be described as deity...
And so what kinds of attributes or traits do you envision would earn a biological such a vaunted status?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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And so what kinds of attributes or traits do you envision would earn a biological such a vaunted status?
What is intelligence capable of? I don't know, but I don't eliminate possibilities on faith. And why does intelligence have to reside biologically all of a sudden when I hear constantly on these threads that machines will soon be or already are much more intelligent then humans?
Your use of the term magic is only your own and it's a term of prejudice that has no meaning beyond: "that defies the laws of physics." Problem is there is much about the physical universe we are yet to understand.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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paul roehl: Problem is there is much about the physical universe we are yet to understand.
No sh#t, but I think we can safely dispense with whole classes of magical nonsense when it comes to biologicals. And as a software engineer, I'd say sentient machines aren't going to be happening anywhere or anytime as well so that really doesn't leave much besides god magic.
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WBraun
climber
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And as a software engineer, I'd say sentient machines aren't going to be happening anywhere
or anytime as well so that really doesn't leave much besides god magic.
You are a sentient machine, to begin with.
So your whole mental speculations are just that again ..... clueless guessing as usual.
Just as an automobile is a very crude example of a gross materialist attempt to create a sentient machine.
It is sentient as long as the driver is operating the vehicle.
Because the gross materialists ultimately have no real clue to what a sentient living entity ultimately is they are always in poor fund of knowledge masquerading themselves as knowledgeable .....
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WBraun
climber
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I did and I would say just the opposite, that gods are all about very imaginative magic.
You are the one who imagines everything and is ultimately clueless to reality itself as a software engineer.
You're insane also, thinking as a software engineer you know what life itself is ......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I'm running a couple of algorithms against your posts and so far they're coming back with an assessment you're a 1937 carnival automaton made in Budapest by a mad Roma genius.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Not interested in talking about QM with another physicist with you as the intermediary, Largo.
You correctly used the word “posit” when referring to Chalmers’ ideas on “the hard problem”.
Because some people think the current scientific approaches aren’t going to work their opinions cannot be construed as a proof that these approaches cannot work. You nor they, have offered any demonstration. Everyone gets to work on what they think is important, that choice doesn’t convey any authority to their ideas, real work, in the scientific sense, provides that authority.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 5, 2018 - 11:52am PT
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Because some people think the current scientific approaches aren’t going to work their opinions cannot be construed as a proof that these approaches cannot work. You nor they, have offered any demonstration. Everyone gets to work on what they think is important, that choice doesn’t convey any authority to their ideas, real work, in the scientific sense, provides that authority.
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Work for what? I think you are misguided here, Ed. Who do you know in physics who is working on consciousness? How, as many have pointed out, is a mode of inquiry that by design attempts to exclude consciousness, supposed to "explain" consciousness. When you say Chalmers and others haven't demonstrated how a linear-causal/physical model will not be useful in the adventure, you imply that it has, as of now, made some progress in demonstrating or even imagining a purely physical model for consciousness. Not even. Not remotely so. There have been fantastic strides made in what Chalmers calls the "soft problems," but all that good work pertains to objective functioning, NOT how a physical brain creates experience. And the biggest howlers in systematic logic are the hare-brained efforts to try and posit experience itself as an objective phenomenon.
Long story short, the very reason that Information Theory, Biocentrism, and all the other flavors have emerged is the seeming futility of chasing a chimerical physical "explanation" for experience. And again, at least some of the people pursuing those paths are renown scientists who perfectly understand a type A physicalist platform, so it's not as though the science or the math is lost on them.
And none, so far as I can tell, are about to suddenly quite doing their quantifications. That's also a misconception. My sense of it you are ready to do most anything to cling to your belief in an independent, stand alone, objective world "out there," and it really is as simple as that. Imagine telling people like Penrose and Lanza that they are not engaged in "real work." Your scientism is show there, Ed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edvdzh9Pggg
Great vid on what's happening at CERN (and a fine overview as well). Harry Cliff must be one of the best popular science lecturers out there.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Cool vid, Largo. Good to see particle physicists aren't resting on their laurels.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Largo: Long story short, the very reason that Information Theory, Biocentrism, and all the other flavors have emerged is the seeming futility of chasing a chimerical physical "explanation" for experience.
Giving up and dabbling in magic and metaphysics is certainly always an option. Good thing science somehow missed the message it's at an impasse.
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WBraun
climber
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Ed. Who do you know in physics who is working on consciousness?
The western American physicist Robert G. Jahn founder of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab for one.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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the biggest howlers in systematic logic are the hare-brained efforts to try and posit experience itself as an objective phenomenon.
What is the logical error in the premise that your experience arises because of activity in your neurons?
Many people have had deep brain stimulators implanted. This electrical stimulation can produce a variety of sensations. Couldn't those sensations be called "experience?"
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