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Author Topic:   I Know That God Does Not Exist
Son Goku
Inactive Member


Message 1209 of 3207 (857409)
07-08-2019 11:37 AM
Reply to: Message 1204 by Stile
07-08-2019 11:03 AM


1. I already know that absolute rationality will not get us all we desire.
2. I think that if AI ever becomes a real thing it will necessarily require a certain level of irrationality (perhaps generated through some strange randomizing algorithm.)
3. I think that if irrationality is ever successfully programmed into AI, the AI will either have to be programmed (or learn) what contexts irrationality is useful in - just as we do.
What's irrationality here strictly.
Depending on the meaning we already know (mathematically) that it's not possible to be unbiased.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1204 by Stile, posted 07-08-2019 11:03 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1272 by Stile, posted 07-16-2019 1:08 PM Son Goku has seen this message but not replied

  
Son Goku
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 1218 of 3207 (857446)
07-08-2019 2:08 PM
Reply to: Message 1194 by Phat
07-08-2019 9:04 AM


Re: chances
Thugpreacha writes:
What are your personal observations and experience with such philosophies where you live? Positive or Negative, overall?
A bit of a simple answer, but discussion of religion would be rare where I live in the sense you mean here. Religion in Ireland mostly takes the form of a cultural Catholicism that's more about traditions and conduct in a certain sense than actually about God and Jesus as odd as that might sound. Even very strict Catholics I knew growing up rarely spoke about God or in fact never did.
One would think (or imagine) that there could be agents in that Jesus was in the beginning with His Father and thus was the original observer regarding Creation in general
I was a bit vague on this since it can get technical. The agents of the form assumed in Quantum Theory are ones who reason classically and use classical concepts and logic. In the early universe there is nowhere classical anymore so such agents can't exist.
That's not to say there aren't other kinds of agents. Even outside of religion I've known people to mention half-jokingly aliens who just grasp the quantum realm. However quantum theory theory concerns classical agents managing their expectations with probability theory.

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Son Goku
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 1219 of 3207 (857453)
07-08-2019 2:38 PM
Reply to: Message 1213 by GDR
07-08-2019 12:43 PM


Re: chances
GDR writes:
What about other cellular life forms, such as animals, insects or I suppose even plants. They all respond to their environment? In one sense at least they are all programmed
Possibly. I think there is evidence that some animals use certain aspects of probability theory:
JSTOR: Access Check
The problem is probability theory kind of just says "Imagine there is an agent..." or "Imagine somebody is betting...", but never really answers who can bet or who can be an agent. When the theory was first drawn up it sort of obviously referred to us. Since then it has been expanded.
It's actually a point of discussion in the philosophy of probability.
GDR writes:
When the early universe is examined do the laws of mathematics still apply with no reasoning agent as a part of anything?
Very brief answer. When people try to apply Quantum Theory to the early universe some of the results don't really make any sense or it's hard to understand what they mean. Now very few people work in this area, but the usual understanding is that it just doesn't make sense since there can't be classical agents in the very early universe.
You can use General Relativity since it describes things "as they are" independently of agents, but it becomes inaccurate past a certain point and ultimately breaks down.
GDR writes:
Wouldn’t that throw into question all the accounts of the early universe
Most of the stuff you'd read about the early universe describes stages when General Relativity is a valid theory. So these accounts retain validity. There's currently no accounts of what was happening past a certain point. In certain readings of quantum theory (although it is the majority one) there can't be a mathematical account of what was happening back then.
As I said above quantum theory seems to concern what happens when classical agents (whatever they are precisely as I mentioned) make measurements that involve the microscopic realm. However it doesn't tell you directly what the microscopic realm is actually like. It's a bit like the user manual that might come with a computer. It'll tell you "this is what happens when you click here" etc, but it doesn't tell you actually how a computer works (hardware details, operating system kernel).
It seems the actual microscopic realm can't be mathematically described (See my longer post here: EvC Forum: The first Universal Law of the Universe). Quantum Theory can say what you as a macroscopic agent can expect from the microscopic when you "touch" it, but since it can't tell you what the microscopic is actually like and in the early universe there is only the microscopic you're sort of stuck.
Some more philosophically minded physicists have referred to this as "The Chasm" (Robert Omns referring to the gap between what QM tells you and the actual microscopic world) or "Veiled Reality" (Bernard d'Espagnat). Jeffrey Bub says it nicely in one of his textbooks on quantum theory:
Bub writes:
if current physical theory has it right, the nature of reality,the way things are, limits the sort of explanation that a physical theory provides
Edited by Son Goku, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1213 by GDR, posted 07-08-2019 12:43 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1222 by GDR, posted 07-08-2019 4:08 PM Son Goku has replied

  
Son Goku
Inactive Member


Message 1225 of 3207 (857543)
07-09-2019 8:06 AM
Reply to: Message 1222 by GDR
07-08-2019 4:08 PM


Re: chances
GDR writes:
Is it correct that a particle has a number of possibilities
Yes. Any time you set up an experiment to measure the microscopic realm there are usually several possible results, but you don't know which will occur in advance.
However fully accurately "particle" is a classical concept only useful in describing the results of some experiments. The "stuff" down there isn't really particles.
GDR writes:
only become our reality when a reasoning agent becomes involved and then the probabilities become one
In various circumstances the microscopic realm will leave an impression in the macroscopic world. Quantum Theory then tells you what kind of impressions an agent should expect, how likely each kind of impression is in a given situation and how the agent should update their expectations of future impressions given the ones they've already seen.
An example would be a silver oven with a glass screen next to it. Quantum Mechanics will predict the glass will develop point like marks and what the chance is for it to develop them in certain locations. Given the marks you see it can also tell you what the chance is that another glass screen behind the first will develop marks.
Now note that even in the natural world similar "emitter/detector" combos can form. For example the gas in stellar core can be considered to be measuring whether atoms within it have fused. So there doesn't need to be an agent for these kind of micro/macro interactions to be present. However quantum theory describes how an agent might gamble on the outcome of these interactions, so the theory does assume an agent even though in nature no agent is required for these interactions.
However quantum theory does say that the outcome of these micro/macro interactions isn't determined by any previous physical fact or event. It's a completely new fact that doesn't follow from anything previously. So yes something new does enter reality from the actions of conscious beings like ourselves when we preform measurements, but this a special case of elements of nature more generally being creative when they interact. Our experiments are just a special case of macro/micro interactions.
If you prefer a more poetic description Chris Fuchs, a professor of Quantum Information at Waterloo and MIT, and the Nobel Laureate John Wheeler describe this as "creation being an ongoing process". The scientific name being "Participatory Realism". You'd see similar views from a more religious angle in the philosophical papers of Alfred North Whitehead.
GDR writes:
Prior to that it is a wave-particle, and then becomes when measured or observed it becomes a point-particle?
QM says that sometimes the impression in the macroscopic realm will be a point like mark, but it isn't talking about anything becoming a point particle.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1222 by GDR, posted 07-08-2019 4:08 PM GDR has replied

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Son Goku
Inactive Member


Message 2850 of 3207 (894922)
06-02-2022 4:13 PM
Reply to: Message 2848 by kjsimons
05-31-2022 3:20 PM


Re: Ringo and Jar. Two peas in a pod
Just to say this isn't a closely tied to religion in Ireland as I think it is in the US. Opposition to abortion is still pretty high amongst atheists in Ireland. When I was an undergrad the head of the anti-abortion league in my uni was an ardent atheist.

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 Message 2848 by kjsimons, posted 05-31-2022 3:20 PM kjsimons has not replied

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