"I'm not afraid of anything"

Don't be ridiculous. You wouldn't be suggesting that attention centers are located in your eyeballs, would you?

Seriously though, enough psychophysical experiments have been conducted by now to fill a library of documentation, showing that ceratin brain structures, such as portions of thalamus and prefrontal cortex, are vital to attention. Any given human individual can completely loose any particular sensory modality (even be born without it) -- and would not have lost either the faculty of attention or consciousness.

Strange that someone so intimately dependent on dictionaries would discuss determinism in connection with a concept that does not represent an entity capable of interaction.

Sure, and scarlet is not a shade of red. In my book, material processes are material in nature, and remain so even if they are collectively given an overarching name like "thought".

You mean, as in "practical knowledge derived from observation"?

Define "the most pathetic superstition".

If motion of human eye is required for visual perception, then that very requirement for motion is part of the mechanism of the eye. Note: "mechanism". Your next question should concern the relationship between mechanisms and logic.

And what, pray tell, makes a neuron so special compared to an atomic-level simulation of a neuron?

I would have hoped that by now I had given the word "persistence" enough definition that you wouldn't have to dig in dictionaries. But since you insist, my dictionary also provides the following meaning to the word:

<b>2 a</b> : continuing or inclined to persist in a course
And transience as I use it would denote above over a non-infinite time interval. The argument was that the most fundamental entities of reality are not transient, while everything that derives from them can be.

Interesting. I considered two alternatives: 1) God is the ultimate level of reality, 2) God is not the ultimate level of reality. You seem to be claiming that there is a third alternative. How very interesting. Did you get that idea from your dictionary?

You can assemble new sculptures from the same old Lego blocks. (I'm trying to get through, but it's ultimately up to you to make the connections.)

You're a comedian at heart, Tony.

Obviously, then, children can never learn new words since they start out knowing no words at all, and cannot form definitions -- according to your proposal. Seems like you are a living breathing counterexample to your own brainchild.

Of course, the paradox would disappear if only you acknowledged that language ultimately springs forth from percepts. But that would mean that observation is fundamental to cognition -- and you wouldn't like to be regarded as perceptually driven, now would you?

Well gee, let's see if we can untangle yet another untenable position. There is a fundamental entity which we designated symbolically as "mind". The entity is fundamental; its symbolic description secondary. Problem solved!

That's some extremely bizarre text. I would wager that all philosophies are transient -- and exist only as long as they are carried forth by their adherents or by philosophical texts. That, to me, doesn't detract from the fact that they are still philosophies.

All thought is ultimately symbolic. Does that mean, according to you, that all thought is no thought at all?

Let me put it another way: something that cannot ever in principle undergo any change whatsoever, is essentially frozen in time. As a corollary, it can't ever in principle interact with anything. Thus, to everything else such an entity does not exist, and to itself the entity does not exist either since it is incapable of manifesting its own existence even to itself.

So, I include in my definition of "to exist", the capacity of being capable of interaction. This way, even if some composite entity cannot interact with any other entities, its constituents must still be capable of interacting among themselves -- and in that case the composite entity simply becomes a name for the sum of its parts. On the other hand, a fundamental (non-composite) entity incapable of interaction does not exist.

You do eventually rail (see below) against inflexible philosophies. Yet at this instant, you are complaining that I do not wish to portray myself as inerrant or all-knowing. As I mentioned before, my point is a work in progress -- as it is contained within and nurtured by the larger work-in-progress of science. My point is to shrug off the stone age science in favor of its much more complete and sophisticated descendant.

Well, "I persist" is obviously an observation. And as such it obviously spans a finite time interval. Obviously, my observation of "I persist" does in no way imply that I will continue to persist forever. In fact, it obviously can only be taken to mean that I endure over a certain interval during which I make the observation. That, however, is obviously enough to infer a fundamentally non-transient universe. Obvious? I thought so.

But just to make sure, "persistent" doesn't mean "remaining fixed forever". It means "remaining fixed for a period of time". In other words, "persistent" means "having memory", or "having inertia", or "having a consistent association with self across adjacent time frames". Anyway, I guess you wouldn't be having so much difficulty with my terminology if you had a better long-term memory. It seems that as we go on you keep forgetting what was said earlier. I suggest taking notes.

You wouldn't suppose that explication has anything to do with tracing chains of implication? Besides, for someone who is so fond of dictionaries, I wouldn't have expected complaints about multiple definitions. Of course, the definition continues to evolve as you continue to fail in your attempts to grasp what I mean by logic. So, let's consider another iteration of the definition:

<b>Logic is a symbolic framework of information processing, comprised of consistently interacting fundamental symbols.</b> The fundamental symbols represent observed entities. The observed interactions between the entities are mirrored by corresponding interactions between corresponding symbols. The interactions must be consistent, in that at no time can a set of symbols interact in such a way as to prohibit any symbol originally in the set from being in the set at the start of interaction.

(The statement in bold above is essentially the definition of logic, while the sentences below explicate the terminology used in the definition What follows below, is an examination of how the definition above leads to all the other "six or seven" corollaries.)

The symbols and their interactions are persistent over the short-term, with possible long-term change due to newly observed entities (including subcomponents of previously observed entities) or newly observed interactions between entities. The fundamental symbols can aggregate together, to form composite symbols, each of which maps to a set of its components. However, the fundamental symbols cannot be defined in terms of other symbols by their nature, and can only map directly to percepts.

(Note: the fundamental symbols can still be <u>described</u> in terms of other symbols, but the original percept is nor recoverable through such description unless the description itself completely simulates the percept. For example, "mosquito" is a fundamental symbol mapping directly to corresponding visual, acoustic and tactile percepts -- and while it can be described in terms of other symbols (insect, flying, small, sucks blood, etc.) the resulting composite symbol will be informationally distinct from the fundamental symbol available to anyone with direct experience of real mosquitoes. Thus, the fundamental symbols can be generally classified as "concrete", while composite symbols are "abstract".)

The chains of connections that give rise to composite symbols form their meaning; while the meaning of fundamental symbols consists of the percepts to which they map.

With its provisions of persistence and consistency of meaning, logic is a computational device for symbolically modeling the world, and derives its mechanisms directly from the world through interaction. Thus, it can also be said that the entirety of the world is logical. This does not mean that the world is symbolic; rather in this context "logical" means that the world is fundamentally consistent (where the concept of "consistency" ultimately ascends from existence (TIP).)

In other words, the very notion of "existence" is logically constrained to something like "TIP", and presupposes a logical world. As a matter of fact, logic undergirds the entire edifice of human cognition, and as a result humans cannot in principle conceive of anything disconnected from TIP.

Because logic symbolically models reality, it can also be described as the language of reality.

First of all, a minor correction to the definition of "analog". Since the advent of quantum mechanics, it appears that there truly are such things as the smallest possible distance, the smallest interval of time, and the smallest unit of energy (Planck length, time and energy). Whether this is truly the case I don't know, but it's pretty easy to see that if the fundamental units are some 30 orders of magnitude smaller than what is measurable, the measured behavior would appear continuous even though it is stepwise (quantum) at the root. So the distinction between "digital" and "analog" could merely be in the magnitude of the switching threshold, in which case everything is ultimately "digital".

Next, I would commend you on a good point that might be made by a thinking man. However, upon further reflection you will realize that there exists a threshold of noise for the brain or any other biochemical structure, which limits the ultimate precision of the machine. As a matter of fact, you might realize that the entire biochemical makeup of the human body is periodically refreshed -- and moreover, there is the ever-present metabolic activity, cell death and birth, immune response against pathogens, random contributions from various active ingredients in foods and so on. So the precise locations, energies and orientations of particular molecules carry no weight for the functioning of the brain as a whole. Even the parameters of individual neurons are quite unstable. All of which means that the brain does not need to be recorded with subatomic or even atomic precision in order for the "person" encoded in the brain to remain intact. I've only been using the atomic precision in my examples because it is rather concise and convenient; in reality the precision of scan can be much more crude -- perhaps even as crude as micron-scale -- without compromising the information.

Naturally. Which is why brain uploading will require, among many other things, an understanding of how the brain interfaces to the rest of the body. At its simplest, MU will simply attempt to recreate the structures of the brain; once the structures are in place they will function as in the old brain -- in this case, there doesn't need to be any sort of decoding of the information stored in the brain; instead the information will be copied right along with its storage medium. A (much) more sophisticated form of MU might involve a decoding of the brain's information, and transfer of all that information into a new computing medium whose topology has nothing to do with the biological brain. The second variant could only come after the first has already been long since in use, because it is orders of magnitude more demanding (copying vs. reverse-engineering and reimplementing.)

Indeed. If the time is sufficiently short, then biochemical degradation will be manageable and repairable. People have been known to come back from a state of indisputable clinical death (e.g. being frozen for extended periods of time in cold water) without any detectable brain damage.

Machines break down. Humans die. It's the same thing, only we use different words for things that are alive. But ultimately they are still machines, and they still break down.

There is a difference between dead and alive. "Alive" means the machine still works. "Dead" means it is broken down. Death doesn't have to be permanent; if the machine can be repaired then it will be "alive" again. Of course, if a dead biochemical organism is left in its state of breakdown, it will quickly disintegrate due to its own catastrophic metabolism as well as due to parasites, scavengers and the environment, to the point that repair becomes impossible. Then the organism is dead for good.

The trick is to catch an MU candidate right after death, when the damage is minimal and "death" only consists of an organ failure at that point. Especially if the failed organ(s) does(do) not involve the brain, then the brain at that point is still alive (i.e. functional) -- if unconscious. When the brain is reconstructed, hooked up to a body, and brought online in a proper sequence, it will wake up -- and the experience will not be unlike that of surgery patients coming off general anesthesia.

1) Not quite; eugenics also assumes that reproductive rights of individuals are at the mercy of society. I don't. Moreover, the "value" I was referring to denotes the survival of a species, not the value of a sentient individual.
2) Let's just say that the "prior assumption" is the only reasonable account.
3) No I'm not; I suggest you examine more deeply the attributes that make something a living thing as opposed to a lifeless thing. I think you'll come to a conclusion that all of those attributes describe biochemical machines.
4) There's a functional difference between rocks and complex carbon compounds in solution. In case you weren't aware...

A little lesson in logic:

Newton's laws of motion and gravitation are well-known, well-tested and hopefully you will not dispute them. The laws mathematically (logically) lead to the fact that lighter objects move a great deal more than heavier objects when in orbit around the mutual center of gravity. Earth is much lighter than the sun. Connect the dots, o worthy opponent.

1) Entailments have a funny way of tying a single interpretation to a myriad other interpretations. Thus every single observation simultaneously tests many theories. This drastically reduces the requisite number of observers needed to make reasonable progress.
2) Logic leads one to conclude that identical premises lead to identical conclusions. Thus it is never necessary to observe every instance of an interaction in order to thoroughly test the theory describing the interaction. When observation is applied judiciously, it is normally quite easy to observe enough.
3) That's a given. So far, the requisite time has only been growing shorter, not longer. And besides, there are at least a couple billion more years to go...
4) Experiments tend to do that. So do the newfangled practical applications.
5) ditto
6) Not a necessary assumption. But the universe is consistent, and so the various theories describing its various subsets have to be mutually consistent at their intersections. That tends to be a pretty good insurance against singular undetected mistakes.

In such a construction, you are failing to capture an essential component. A more appropriate description for scientific conclusios is not "falsehood", but "approximation". Thus, the history of science is the history of approximation. That is the strength. The approximations only get better as their input expands and their underlying models account for more of the input with higher accuracy.

And this does not mean that the approximations of science must take a long time to become practically (or even completely) indistinguishable from the truth. Sometimes, iterative approximation takes a very long time, but sometimes it converges right away. Science is further benefited by the fact that it is not using just one approximation sequence, but dozens and hundreds of such sequences in parallel. That helps avoid dead ends.

The source of error is not in logic, but in the incompleteness or incongruence of the premises. Hence, logic is only as accurate as its observational background. However, as mentioned in my new attempt at definition of logic above, the reality is indeed consistent, and in that sense it is fundamentally logical.

I find it quite amusing that you keep relying on results from various branches of science to argue for futility of science. (I did expect you to challenge me on that statement, so right on man.)

More to the point, vagueness of definition is no sign of indeterminism; it is a sign of difficulty encountered when a system has to turn an inward eye upon itself and examine its own workings. Human sense of introspection is extraordinary, but it is not nearly as accurate or refined as our other perceptual functions.

But even aside from that, linguistic memes do not have to map to memes from other languages one-to-one. As a matter of fact, a meme from any language can often be defined precisely using a positive number of memes from a different language. The reason is that many memes are composite symbols and are ultimately reducible to fundamental symbols which are independent of language but instead dependent on perception. As long as users of two languages have access to the same perceptual stimuli, their languages will be exactly (if not necessarily graciously) translatable into each other. On the other hand, if one of the languages involves fundamental symbols representing entities that are not available in the context of the other language, then composite symbols involving such entities will not be directly translatable. That is due to different observational backgrounds, not absense of underlying logic.

Exactly. Now transfer the designation of "infant" to the entirety of collective human civilization on Earth. The child has been learning for quite a while now, since those times in which you are mentally stuck.

There is no source of new hydrogen in the universe. Hydrogen is converted in stars over time into heavier elements. Hence, current element abundances indicate a finite age for the universe, and even provide a way to calculate that age based on measurements. By the way, element abundances are not measured in some isolated region, but over the entire sky (sometimes minus the Milky Way disk). Which means there would have had to be some kind of a "Hiroshima" happening independently and simultaneously in every corner of the universe, or otherwise the "Hiroshima" was many orders of magnitude larger than the largest observable structures in the universe. Both pretty extravagant assumptions.

And how would 1. or 2. invalidate the conclusions that the universe is of finite age and receding from us in all directions?

Oy... In case you forgot (which it appears you did), the whole issue sprang up because you refused to believe there is a convincing scientific case for a universe of finite age (i.e. a case for a "beginning of some sort").

No, I mean you aren't seeing your computer screen; you are seeing the photons that you trace back to and associate with it. Sight is merely one way we can interact with reality to learn about it. It happens to be just about the only method suited to perception over extreme distances, which is why it dominates astronomy.

This is, once again, amusing. You do not dispute the evidence. You only dispute the explanations of the evidence, instead proposing your own explanations. Ones based on a prevailing religion of the past few centuries rather than based on reason or, of all things, impartiality. And ones full of shit, to boot.

Let's go over some of the very basic evidence. To start, perhaps you could explain how something like this could have been created by "Noah's Flood":

<img src="http://geollab.jmu.edu/vageol/vahist/images/foldbrail2.JPG">
<img src="http://pbisotopes.ess.sunysb.edu/esp/589_99/mandell/Caumsett_report_files/Fig_10.gif">
<img src="http://pbisotopes.ess.sunysb.edu/esp/589_99/mandell/Caumsett_report_files/Plate_7.jpg">
<img src="http://nrs.ucop.edu/reserves/stebbins/images/landscapes/plate12.jpg">
<img src="http://nrs.ucop.edu/reserves/stebbins/images/landscapes/plate7.jpg">
<img src="http://nrs.ucop.edu/reserves/stebbins/images/landscapes/plate3.jpg">
<img src="http://nrs.ucop.edu/reserves/stebbins/images/landscapes/plate1.jpg">

The latter 4 images are from http://nrs.ucop.edu/reserves/stebbins/geo_figures.htm -- and having lived in that general area for the last 10 years, I've seen plenty of such sites. What you have here, is ancient sediment layers contorted and sometimes nearly stood vertical, forming the ridges and hills that line the western North American coast. This is ancient sea floor turned land, crumpled and twisted by the power of the colliding tectonic plates. I am eagerly awaiting your flood-centric interpretation of such deformed sediment layers.

In reference to the quote above, it's pretty easy to determine whose claims are wrong, even with no further ammunition.

Oh, it's only the history of life on Earth. Other than that, it's really not that important. Sheesh...

Quite aware. I also have been aware of the inherent bullshit present in Communism way before I left Russia.

Nope, Communism failed because it was a wet dream. It did not take human nature into account; it assumed that people in general can be selfless, honest, hard-working and visionary with absolutely no incentive other than a promise of bright future and universal happiness. Kind of like your own religion in that respect.

It turned out, not surprisingly, that people in general are greedy, lazy, and opportunistic -- which makes Capitalism a much more realistic social policy.

Note, however, that a great deal of Soviet socialism did manage to seep over into the Capitalist nations. And oh by the way, I would never argue for Communism because I know it cannot work. You might more accurately describe me as a free-market socialist. I believe in democracy, capitalism, and freedom. I also believe in equal chance for everyone, social safety nets, and a healthy balance between small-scale and large-scale social policies and institutions.

Relax, I am not planning any revolutions. I merely argue my point whenever relevant.

You would be happy to know that the problems of global overpopulation and unsustainable growth concern me greatly. Wars are indeed possible, although less likely with time. I don't think the world will end any time soon though. And, God has nothing to do with it; the problems can only be solved through technology (i.e. sustainable farming, massive recycling, green power, new materials and manufacturing methods, smart growth planning, etc.) -- and ultimately, inescapably, a policy that strongly discourages and perhaps even punishes excessive reproduction.

Next thing, you will be claiming that the U.S. constitution is written by God. Then again, strangely enough, the Jews (the oldest surviving God-obeying sect) had known mostly misery and hardship since time immemorial.

But do try to pay attention to the U.S. economic and social institutions as factors in this country's success. You might actually discover something important there...

No, the colossal error is due to the fact that power-hungry and surprisingly criminal opportunists seized power over a largely ignorant people with a long history of subservitude and leader worship. That, and the fact that Communism is impossible given the human realities. Mind you, prior to the revolution Russia was extremely religious and overwhelmingly Christian; however the only ones who profited from that were the nobility and the churches. The disproportionate riches of the Russian Orthodox church raised popular ire spelled its doom in times of wide-spread poverty, war and famine. The God-fearing, church-allied Russian dynasties led to such a pitiful state, and the reaction following the revolution was, not surprisingly, against anything and everything associated with the bad old times -- including religion.

The US certainly gave a hand at the start, but I could hardly allow this country to take credit for all the subsequent Japanese achievements. Not only that, but the number of Christians in Japan is currently below 1% of the population. Even under Soviet Union, there were more Christians in Russia than there are now in Japan.

I suppose God himself told you that. Because every time I look, I see just the opposite. For example, according to China Christian Council, the 1997 total of all Christians in China falls somewhere between 9 and 13 million. That's out of a total of 1.2 billion. In other words, just about 1%. In 1999, 89% of Russian population were practicing Christians (mind you, yet another overreaction -- this time discarding everything that was associated with communism, including lack of religion.) And while an average Russian is still better off than an average Chinese (~4000 dollars GDP per person vs ~3000 for China), China's economy is on fire while Russian economy is, well...

From http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/india.html :
<table border=4>
<td> India <td> 1961 <td> 1971 <td> 1981 <td> 1991 <tr>
<td> Total <td> 438,936,918 <td> 548,159,652 <td> 665,287,849 <td> 846,302,688 <tr>
<td> Christians <td> 10,728,086 <td> 14,225,045 <td> 16,165,447 <td> 19,640,284
</table>

Pardon me, but I do not see "huge increases in Christians". As a matter of fact, while Christians composed about 2.5% of the population in 1961, by 1991 they compose 2.4% of the population -- an actual drop.

By the way, Christians in South Korea constituted 28% of the total population in 1991.

I do not argue for dialectic materialism. As a matter of fact I find it rather quaint and outdated. Ditto a thousand times that for Christianity.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Hi Boris, that was a fun read, thanks.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Don't be ridiculous. The centers would not be the eyeballs, but some of the processing for vision is definitely performed there.

Are you talking about yourself here?

I was discussing "non-determinism," anyway.

Kind of a strange thing to admit.
Let's pursue that concept a little farther.

You appear to be saying that thought is a material process.
Therefore, the brain which generates these thoughts is doing so by means of various chemical and electrical processes.
Further, you appear to be saying that the brain which generates your thoughts is a result of evolution.
Thus, the brain is essentially a random collection of molecules whose arrangement is optimized to randomly react to other randomly optimized creatures and various material phenomena, such as heat, cold, etc.

I can only conclude, based on your philosophy, that your thoughts are randomly generated results of various physical processes.
And furthermore, being such, they are not under your control.

As such, why should anyone take them seriously?
They can't be of any more value than the rock you evolved from.

To recap...
1. Nothing
2. Big bang
3. Stuff
4. Random aggregation of stuff
5. Random evolution of stuff
6. Boris
7. Random impacts of various molecules in Brownian motion in Boris' brain
8. Boris' thoughts
9. No value, being a random result of random processes

Are you suggesting that the Amazonian witch doctors who performed these "observations" were actually scientists in disguise?

First draft: that drugs will "cure" bad decisions.

Oh no.
Are we going in the direction that logic is now mechanism-dependent?

I'll tell you what.
I will ask your employer to send me your paycheck.
Then, I will ask him to give you a simulation, an atomic-level simulation where the atoms that comprise the cellulose in the paper are simulated by nitrogen, argon and helium atoms and the ink particles are atomically simulated by real ink particles.
You should be happy.

I do agree with this.

No.
Your two alternatives are only partially exclusive, given your earlier definitions.
The definitions you give here are different from your earlier ones.

In any case, how, exactly, is a person to be considered a "level of reality?"

Your comment still does not deal with the issue of your assumptions having a bearing on your end result.

But are they new, in principle?

Actually, I have little concern for how I am regarded, but let's press on.

The actual way the paradox disappears is to accept that God simply gave us language and the brains to process it with.

Your proposal simply creates another paradox.
How is it we have words for percepts AND concepts that cannot be perceived?

You seem to consider one point at a time without considering your overall stand.

If that does solve the problem then you'll have to give up the idea that reality can be observed.
Everything that you've described to this point as "reality" should be considered symbolic, based on your "solution."

Thus, everything you've said to me about reality being based on observation should be restated such that everything that you have declared as reality are actually symbols.
So, your philosophy collapses because your observed realities are actually perceived symbols.
Furthermore, even as you recall remembered symbols, you are simply creating symbols of symbols, ad infinitum.

Thus, you will never know if you are remembering a symbol, or remembering a symbol of a symbol or actually observing "reality."

Of course, "no philosophy at all" doesn't mean denial of a philosophy. It means a philosophy of no value, i.e. a philospohy of such little value that one barely feels like calling it a philosophy at all.

What kind of crap is this?

Let us perform a thought experiment with this...
A mountain, let's call it Everest, is determined to be unchanging by numerous observations over millions of years.
Therefore, it doesn't exist and nothing was observed?

Using the principles you've established in this short statement, I include in my defintion of "tony1 is right," the capacity for Boris to be wrong.
This way, even if Boris is right, he is right only to himself.
On the other hand, Boris being wrong proves that tony1 is right.

Hey, I like that.
Simply defining myself as right saves a lot of time.

Well, let's just say that I'm not expecting inerrancy or all-knowingness.
I'm simply expecting the relative absence of completely contradictory and mutually-exclusive statements.

"Stone-age" being related to some as-yet unproven theory that some call "evolution?"
This "more complete and sophisticated descendant" being the "science" which calls evolution a theory, yet at the same time claims it is a proven fact, but without evidence?

Infer?
Are you inferring that objects that constitute the observable universe are non-transient?
Or, are you inferring that the substrate that these objects are located in, is non-transient?

Hey! What is this? A materialist with a sense of humor?
How can a materialist have a sense of humor, since humor cannot be observed?

However, your definition for persistence is the same as your definition for transience.
How convenient for you.
I'd have less difficulty with your terminology, if your definitions didn't migrate from word to word like geese.

Usually, when dictionaries have multiple definitions, they are similar.
Your multiple definitions are contradictory.

For example when you define logic as the language of existence and fundamental substrate of existence at the same time.

It should be obvious that language is a consequence of existence and cannot therefore be a prerequisite to existence at the same time.

But, I await the further "evolution" of the definition.
Oh, here it is.

Aside from the inherently self-contradictory idea of a "fundamental symbol," symbols cannot interact. Being symbolic, symbols have no meaning, therefore what is the meaning of "interaction" where symbols are concerned?

Come on. Persistence "over the short-term" is called transience.

When you say "fundamental symbol," you appear to mean "symbol of a fundamental percept," or perhaps "percept of a fundamental entity."

This kind of thinking is what I would expect from someone who is simply attempting to mimic real perception in such a way as to make "perception" available to a machine.

I hope you don't go thru life thinking like this.
Since when are symbols concrete, with or without quotes?
Symbols are, by definition, abstract.

How can I get a job working where you work?
I assume you're getting paid to think like this.

I've got a program called a Kant generator which can generate philosphical "thought" at this level.

Here's where you say what I said a while ago.
To you, logic is simply the silicon expression af AND and OR gates, and you use it to create MODELS of the world.
Not only that the models themselves are not symbols, but symbols of symbols.

Thus, my general thought is that your thinking processes are one step removed from reality.

We have now returned to the point where logic simply means consistency.

Here is the contradiction in your own words.

How can logic be the foundation ("undergirds") of cognition, which in turn is the means by which you observe reality and at the same time be the "language of reality?"

The assumption is that logic is both a prerequisite of reality, since it is required for observation, and a consequence of reality, since reality must exist before the language used to describe it.

Ergo, I reject that kind of contradictory definiton for "logic."

Two points...
1. If you are right about analog really being digital, then mind uploading will have to wait until computers have 30 orders of magnitude (!) more memory than they do now.
Which galaxy do you suppose will be entirely consumed for the construction of such a machine?
And where does one plug it in?
2. OTOH, quantum mechanics appears to be what it is from the perspective of the particle under its rules, e.g. an electron.
For example, electrons do exhibit quantum behavior, such as in a tunnel diode. But what about surrounding particles? Do all of the particles forming a tunnel diode exhibit quantum behavior, or is the behavior limited to the electrons exhibiting the tunneling?

Again, some thoughts...
1. Thought in your world-view is even more random than I had allowed for.
2. Perhaps inch-scale is close enough?
3. If the locations, energies and orientations of molecules carry no (!) weight, then what does? If they carry no weight, then perhaps mind uploading, from a mechanistic perspective, is based on a colossal misconception. One may have to wait for a copy machine which can copy souls or spirits or some such thing.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Pt 2

I suspect that we may be several millenia away from this.

However, the microtome method proposed for MU is, by definition, brain damage.

Humans break down. This is called injury or illness.
The thing called death is what does not happen to machines.

You seem to be confusing breakdown with death.

OK, altho see what you say later about this.

Reasonable? Given no evidence?

Your assumption here is that difficulty of description equates to absence of the thing being described.
IOW, I won't come to the conclusion that we are just biochemical machines.
I suggest that you attempt to describe what humor is, for a test.

Oh, there's that mechanistic humor, again.

However, you're claiming that by random processes we evolved from a rock.

Oh, hehe.

Let's try to think while we're discussing this.

You still don't know where the edges of the universe are.
Therefore, by extension, you don't know where the center is either.

Plus, it is easy to see that if the frame of reference is the solar system, the earth does revolve around the sun.
My point is, you don't know what the frame of reference is.

Funny.

Let's take the red-shift observed in the universe.
If one were to place an observer at the point in the universe where the greatest amount of red-shift has been observed and that observer were to look back at the earth, would the earth appear red-shifted or violet-shifted?
If you cannot answer that correctly, then we do not have enough observers.
If you can answer that correctly, then I will think of another thing.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that we observe identical iterations of some potential thing to be observed.
I'm suggesting that we have not observed, for example, a "green-shift" in the universe.
Does that mean there isn't one?
Or does it mean that all the color shifts in the universe are all red?

You hope.

Right.
Look at the illusions working with computers has led you to.

How about large groups of mistakes, such as the ones surrounding the theory of "evolution?"
No evidence, yet many argue that the existing data is mutually consistent with..., what?
Not even a definition exists for evolution.

You can call it approximation, but that is scant consolation for the millions who perish and have perished due to the "approximations" of medical "science."

On the other hand, this approach may lock you into a guaranteed dead end.

Just look at how many algorithms may allow you to find local maxima and minima on a curve, but cannot tell if there is an absolute maximum or minimum.

I agree that there is an underlying consistency to logic as a branch of mathematics.
The problem is that the practical application of logic is non-existent for the most part.

I'm glad I can supply you with chuckles.

However, nothing works better to demonstrate the inaccuracy of science than the results of the various sciences.
There are too many contradictory, falsified, biased and otherwise unreliable data in the realm of science to pass up in the refutation of scientism, "scientism" being a coined word which represents the religious aspects of Science (with a capital S), where "science" simply comes from the Latin for "knowledge."

Scientists, thus, can be Scientists, i.e. high priests of the religion of scientism, or Science, or they can be scientists, i.e. people searching for knowledge.

I'm glad you specified "positive."
I was beginning to worry about having to discuss the ramifications of negative numbers of memes.

I wonder how you would explain the difference in the number of basic words for colors int he various languages.
Presumably, we all have the same colors to perceive.

Ooh, such sly, rapier wit.
OTOH, it could be argued that you see things from only one point of view, whereas I have two to choose from, the old one I used to use (the same as yours) and the one I do use.
Thus, I've learned two things, where you have only learned one.

A more extravagant assumption would be that you know what is going on in the universe.

It wouldn't, of course.
It would call into question the idea that we are not at the center of the universe.

??????
I've been arguing for a beginning of some sort.
Or has your memory developed some stuck bits?

I questioned your statements that there was no beginning, given your definition of persistence.

1. So when I touch my computer screen...?
2. I assume your definition of "sight" extends far beyond the visible spectrum?

Correction, I don't dispute the data.

Given that the prevailing religions are Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, paganism and relatively few others, I'd have to agree with you on the shit thing.
On the other hand, it may surprise you to know that the Flood is something that is not accepted by any of those.
From what I can gather Islam, Buddhism and paganism and the others have no bearing on our discussion, so I'll leave them out.

That leaves Roman Catholicism which officially backs evolution.

Chritianity being a relatively minor player in numbers, I can't see how it would be a "prevailing" religion, except in power.

First thing, notice the layers.
In any flood, the sediments stratify and rather rapidly.
Secondly, notice the folds.
Unless you are prepared to argue that the pre-Flood surface of the earth was uniformly strong, I'd say that the weight of the water during the Flood combined with the rapid dissipation of the weight of water afterward would tend to produce forces in the crust sufficiently strong to produce the bends you see, particularly if the sediment is still wet.

Similar layering visible there.
BTW, the labelling of something as "Pleistocene" does not make it so, and also does not make it multiple hundreds of millions of years old, either.

I see a picture of thick sediment possibly deposited during a large flood (which one?), eroded by water runoff in the left-to-right (or vice-versa) direction, with additional erosion caused by subsequent weathering in the top-to-bottom direction.

Again, layering seems quite prominent.

More layering.

Looks like a series of anticlines.

I see the problem.
You're thinking the flood is the only thing I see in the Bible.

It isn't.

The formation of tectonic plates...
And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.
(Genesis 10:25, KJV).

The movement of the tectonic plates...
Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.
(Psalms 18:15, KJV).

The violent forces that would form such distorted landscapes...
The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
(Psalms 114:4, KJV).

Poetic language, it is true, but the events are described.

Well.

Yet a small number that escape the sword shall return out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah, and all the remnant of Judah, that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose words shall stand, mine, or theirs.
(Jeremiah 44:28, KJV).

Well, if it isn't progress, what's the point?
If it is regression, we should do what we can to stop it.

I sort of glad to hear that, but why do you argue for the specific thing you were trained for, if you are aware of the bullshit?

Kind of.
Communism was supposed to be Lenin's idea of how to preempt God.
To that extent, it is like Christianity.
However, Lenin, like many others, wasn't paying attention when he was reading the Bible and deciding to co-opt it, with God left out.

He missed this...

And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,
But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.
(Mark 10:29,30, KJV).

You sound Canadian.

Whew, stress meter back in the green.

Whoops, there's that eugenics thing again.
Of course, your plan sounds a lot like Communism in the early days, not that you're Communist.
It's just that rose-colored glasses slip on so easily.

Why is it then, that most people think of the Jews as hoarding most of the world's money?
Not only that, while the Jews were obeying God, they were quite obviously wealthy.

The richest queen in the world at the time, got depressed when she saw Solomon's wealth...
And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built,
And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the LORD; there was no more spirit in her.
And she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom.
Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard.
(1 Kings 10:4-7, KJV).

Such as?

Correction: overwhelmingly Catholic.

Catholicism does have that bad habit of leaving a sour taste in everyone's mouth, along with piles of corpses.

Of course, going from 0% to 1% is an infinite improvement.

89% of Russians may have been practising Catholics, for sure.
The number of Christians is way down there.

Still, the number doubled.

Given that the majority of the world's population is doomed, Christianity is like salt in your food.
No one makes the main course salt.

Ye are the salt of the earth:...
(Matthew 5:13, KJV).

You haven't found Christianity at all.

 

Tony,

I apologize for taking so long to respond, but other duties called... Before I launch once again into a deconstruction of your petty plays on syntax and brilliant displays of ignorance, let me just say this: rarely have I ever met a person, in real life or online, who seemed to delight so in showcasing to the rest of the world just how seam-bursting full of shit they are. You can take that as a compliment if you wish. Now...

Something that is optimized, is no longer random.

And even the very process of optimization, as pertains to evolution of life, is not entirely random either. There is a difference between a random search and a directed random search. Evolution of life happens to be a case of the latter, where direction is supplied by the requirements of viability, survival and procreation in the context of the immediate physical environment and indeed laws of physics.

Even a device driven by entirely random input need not produce a completely random output; it depends on how the input is processed and whether the device introduces higher-order time dependencies. The brain is not a copy machine; it is a sophisticated information processor. So even though it is modulated by "random" input, what comes out is not nearly as random. Of course, even the "randomness" of the input is not complete. After all, even though the sequence and instantaneous composition of brain's input is generally unpredictable (especially over the long term), the fundamental components of the input generally fall within a very narrow range of everything that is possible.

To see that in the context of the visual modality, consider a computer program that generates random pixel patterns on your computer screen. The results will overwhelmingly look like white noise, and the likelihood of a natural-looking image being generated at random via such a process will be infinitesimal. This is because for every image that ever impinged on your retinas over your lifetime, there are unnameable, enormous quantities of other possible images that you have never seen, never shall see, and never could see -- at least not in the context of your natural environment. So, even though visual input is "random", it is at the same time highly structured. The same is true of all the other sensory modalities, as well as of all the other processes that affect the brain, including the instantaneous physical state of your entire body.

So what we are and what we do is not completely random, but is indeed a function of the universe that gives us definition.

A very important point. On the one hand, I've already mentioned that the brain is not a copy machine. It possesses state and therefore its behavior is not determined entirely by current input, but also generally speaking by the entirety of all input it received over its lifetime, plus its biologically hard-coded structures and algorithms. In this sense, behavior at any given instant is very much under an individual's control (well, how much can depend on the exact circumstances...) -- because it occurs in the powerfully present, preexisting context of that individual (of course, early in life this context is still in the process of being formed, and thus children are usually less blameable for misbehavior the younger they are; adults, on the other hand, are typically expected to "know better".)

On the other hand, no individual is an island on the sea of the universe. We are all an integral part of the physical reality, and under that context we can be thought of as sub-processes occuring within the encompassing program. I tend to believe that the universe is fundamentally deterministic -- i.e. that nothing comes out of nothing, which includes influences behind the interactions that drive apparently random processes. Thus, I do indeed postulate "fate" -- that the exact complete state of the universe at any particular moment completely predetermines all of its states from that moment onward. The complete state of the universe is, of course, unknowable by definition (the paradox of omniscience) and by virtue of existence (to perceive you must interact; interacting, you alter the universe's state away from the one you just perceived.) Moreover, recording even a substantial amount of the universe's state may be physically impossible, for example if the universe is infinite, but also due to sheer unfeasibility even for the visible universe. Thus, we are quite justified in simply assuming that the universe can be unpredictable and non-deterministic -- even if justified only by the sheer practicality of the assumption. However, that does not detract from the fact that the conversation between me and you is essentially the case of one part of the universe interacting with another, against the backdrop of complete determinism. Trippy, eh?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Well, the relative value of my thoughts can be judged against two things: the stark physical reality of existence itself, and against other thoughts. However little value you might see in my thoughts, therefore, my argument would be that there is even less value in yours (and it is not I who evolved from "a rock", nor is it you -- it is the biochemical carbon-based life on this planet, of which the species Homo Sapiens represents an almost insignificant portion. And for the millionth time, known life did not evolve from a rock.)

It puzzles me, but you do seem to think that science just appeared ex nihilo in medieval Europe, or in ancient Greece, or wherever it is you wish to pinpoint its genesis. That's a ridiculous notion. Science is merely an act of modeling the world, and it is intimately identifiable with the very act of cognition. The very foremost human scientists are newborn children.

Various practical knowledge had been gathered by humanoids on Earth since before there was a species called Homo Sapiens. Some of that knowledge may have been buried under the veneer of mysticism and ritual, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it was practical knowledge gained through observation.

Modern science is an achievement in structure, consistency, rigor and continuity, but it is not an invention of something entirely new. It takes a natural, often subconscious and inconsistently applied methodology, and canonizes it into an explicit procedure and philosophy, in addition carrying forth into the future, in a systematic fashion, its accumulated practical knowledge.

I don't think anyone ever tried to cure decisions (whatever that means). However, it might be a reasonable thing to seek a cure for deleterious consequences of bad decisions (when prevention fails to avoid them.)

Actually, it's more that mechanisms are logic-dependent. It all comes back to consistency. As in, a particular input leading to a well-determined chain of interactions, leading to a consistently predictable output (assuming signal to noise ratios that allow for proper operation of the mechanism.)

Well, as long as you don't get my paycheck, I will be happy with a simulation under one additional condition: that my simulated paycheck have a well-defined corresponding interface at the bank, so that when I "deposit" it, my electronic cash balance is increased accordigly. By the way, exchange of money is a "simulation" of barter, and electronic money (e.g. your credit card) is a "simulation" of metallic coins and printed paper rectangles. Still, being the simulations that they are, they appear to make a real difference in the non-simulated world...

I suppose the one thing you keep failing to see, purposefully or not, is the interface between the simulation and reality. The neurons in your brain don't interact with the environment around you directly under normal circumstances, and neither would the simulated neurons inside an android's brain.

A person has to exist, and a person has to have mental states. That existence, and those states, have to be made of something. If that "something" is not the fundamental stuff of reality, then it and the person it encodes are mere derivatives. Well, actually in either case the person is a derivative of the stuff that encodes the person. So, if I may dare repeat an earlier question: what does it gain us philosophically to postulate a deity, if that deity is in itself a derivative entity with respect to something even more fundamental?

I just love this going in circles thing. Wheeeee....

Well, to start off the next revolution: if they have never been seen or experienced before, then they would be new, <i>in principle</i>.

Somebody pinch me. Are you saying that language is not learned? Last time I checked, people weren't born speaking English -- or weren't you aware of that?

Percepts that cannot be perceived -- wow. So, like, AND what again?

As for concepts that cannot be perceived, I thought I covered it pretty thoroughly in the discussion of "fundamental" vs. "composite" symbols.

All observations we make are symbolic. That hardly means that the observations cannot be made, or that they do not reflect or model reality in meaninful ways. Reality is that brick wall behind the symbols. It's the thing that slaps you over the head when your model of it is flawed. It is the source of you and the symbols, to begin with.

Any observation (where "observation" is in a context of a sentient being trying to perceive something) presupposes a model of reality (e.g. the structure of your eye), and any outcomes of such observations must also be modelled, since they must be represented within the context of symbolic thought. Think of a chair. You aren't having a chair inside your head, but a number of ineracting symbols that together form the concept of "chair". You trace that composite concept back to its relevant fundamental percepts, and that is how you are ultimately able to recognize and use real chairs. Of course, the percepts themselves are symbolic representations of the chair -- after all, when you see a chair, there is no chair floating through your eyes and into your head, only photons representing the chair impinging on your retinal photoreceptors, where the electromagnetic representation is converted into electrochemical and transmitted for further processing. Any of this does not in any way imply that the chair does not exist, indeed quite the opposite -- if it interacts with you, then it is part of reality. Virtual reality can be so convincing (when detailed enough) -- precisely because complete emulation of percepts recreates in your mind the reality that corresponds to the percepts (your mind simply keeps on working under the assumption that what you see is indeed what you get.)

I would know if perceptual memory were distinct from conceptual memory -- which in the actual brain, it is. That is why we can self-diagnose the difference between a remembered percept and a remembered concept (why they "feel" different.) But in addition, percepts have an altogether different information content from composite symbols, and in light of that it's pretty hard to confuse the two.

So, you would find value in a philosophy which is not transient. Except philosophies are symbolic entities defined in the context of human minds, and since human minds (and even human civilizations, and even species) are transient, that would mean you will never find any philosophy of any value. Sucks for you. Unless, of course, you are naiive enough to believe that your particular religion is immortal. In which case, sucks for you.

If it can be observed, then it can interact, and therefore it can undergo change. After all, to emit a photon means to undergo change, and to electromagnetically repulse a climber means to interact and undergo change, etc. And even if the mountain itself as a whole would never interact with anything (ignoring such things as pressure on the crust, or atmospheric currents, etc.), then its constituent parts still interact, and thus the "mountain" simply becomes a symbol for the sum of its interacting parts.

Simply defining everything as "work of God" saves even more time. That doesn't mean it's a smart thing to do. Besides, I didn't "simply define" -- I provided quite a lengthy explanation for how I arrived at my definition.

No, in this case it's related to some as-yet unproven theory that some call "history."

Only simple-minded children would call a theory a proven fact, and I wouldn't count them as representing modern science -- more like modern ignorance. As for evidence, you'd see plenty if you weren't expending so much effort into keeping your eyes shut and your ears plugged.

Yes, that one.

Well, since humor cannot be observed, then I suppose you will never observe anyone with a sense of humor. That, and you'd never know when something was funny even if you were rolling on the floor gasping for air. By the way, you'd be unhappy to learn that humor (or rather, neural mechanisms behind it)has become, in the last few decades, a subject of rigorous scientific investigation -- yes, it can not only be observed, but even systematically studied.

Hey, whatever works for you. You want to call it transience? Fine. Personally, I like persistence better, because it is more closely associated with things like "inertia", or "memory". Persistence and transience can have the same meaning over short time scales -- e.g. "persistent up to 2 seconds" vs. "transient over the range of 2 seconds". As the applicable time interval approaches infinity, transience has a closer association with impermanence, while persistence with permanence. Since I was trying to convey a logical chain from the observation of brief existence to the inference of infinite existence, I chose persistence as the more natural concept.

I was searching for words, and didn't happen to find any. Rename "fundamental symbol" into "percept", and "composite symbol" into "concept". Though, to be careful, I might mention that when I referred to "percepts" in my previous posts I tended to mean the immediate information impinging on a sensory organ, so that a "fundamental symbol" would be the stored result of processing the percept, and would map back onto the percept. With the change in terminology, the "percept" would become the end-result of a sensory perception, while the information impinging on the sensory organ would be left nameless -- or, perhaps, I should simply call it "input". The "concept" then becomes a somewhat hierarchical grouping of percepts and possibly other concepts.

Percepts have meaning because they represent real-world objects. Symbols interact through association (as in "a goes with b"). This mechanism of association is in itself a reality-modeling rule, but it is part of a more fundamental logical framework -- a framework that describes the workings of the information processor itself, and which is therefore primary (the information processor must first be constructed and allowed to work for a while before it forms a higher-order logical framework based on newly-acquired percepts.)

You must have never heard of "abstract notion" or "concrete example". You must be from a weird parallel universe. (I would also like to reiterate that everything going on inside your skull is symbolic with respect to the external world.)

It is almost the same thing you said a while ago, except that I hope I've shown how logic stems from existence and how it connects to existence at the level of the physical interface between reality and the information processor. You were trying to claim that logic is just an empty symbol-manipulating game that has nothing to do with the real world; I have shown that logic has everything to do with the real world, that it is used to model the real world, and that the resulting models indeed have meaning as it pertains to the real world, and that this meaning is defined in terms of the real world itself. I have shown that logic is fundamental to symbolic thought, to cognition in general, to mechanisms, consistency, and pragmatism. Once you acquiesce to all of that, then we shall indeed be saying the same thing, at least on the account of logic.

The funny thing is I wasn't talking just about my thinking processes, but about all thinking processes including yours. Symbolic as such thinking processes are, then I have no problem with the second half of your claim.

This can be since logic does not apply at just one level, but at all levels. Cognition is a process carried out by a mechanism (which I've been calling the "information processor"), and the workings of that mechanism are in themselves consistent and describable accurately by a logical framework. The information processor itself can be viewed as a model of reality (since, were the structure or behavior of reality to change, the information processor would likely no longer work) -- the very fact that the information processor works testifies to correctness of the model of reality inherent in the information processor's construction.

Note that, at least in the case of the human brain, the information processor is not the only possible outcome of a combination of its basic constituents; you can take a human brain and deep-fry it and it would still be the same basic matter, only arranged differently, and it would no longer work. Therefore the particular construction of the human brain is not mandated by laws of physics; it is not favorable over other alternative constructions even of equal complexity strictly in terms of probability of random assembly. Rather, the particular construction of the brain happens to be well-suited to perceiving and modeling reality, among other things. It is this particular arrangement of the basic constituents (such as atoms, for example) that can be viewed as a model, a representation of reality's structure. You might imagine scientists from a totally different parallel universe getting hold of a working human brain, and from its structure being able to deduce the environment in which it functions, and therefore being able to deduce a lot about the structure and functions of the universe form which the brain came. It is in this way that the information processor itself is a logical framework that models reality -- only the symbols of the framework are not recorded in some secondary state of a material structure such as magnetic polarization of memory cells, but in the internal arrangement of the material structure itself. In this way, logic undergirds cognition.

On the other hand, the secondary logical framework generated by the information processor to describe reality, can be viewed as the fundamental language behind all languages of which the information processor is capable.

As an aside, logic undergirds not only cognition but all life -- because every single living organism or part thereof presupposes in its structure a model of reality, and the more sophisticated or well-tuned the model, the more well-adapted the organism. Thus, in a perhaps unexpected for you way, all life can be viewed as ultimately symbolic in nature. Of course, it has long been my thesis that evolution is merely an information processing enterprise, through which ever-better models of reality are produced (and here you might remind me of the statement that "evolution is not progress" -- but the statement regarded a more conventional concept of "progress" in evolution, such as from single-celled life to multicelled life, for example.) Making a better model of reality in the context of evolution does not necessarily mean making a more complete model of reality in general, but a more fine-tuned model of a relevant, narrow, subset of reality -- and so the modern bacteria are at least as highly-evolved as modern humans (of course, it can still be argued that the transition from single-celled life to multicelled life was pretty much inevitable as a matter of chance, and so the emergence of ever-larger scale organisms with higher-level reality-modelling needs would have been inevitable as well -- so then the optimization tendencies of biochemical evolution could be thought of as contributing to the "progress" from bacillus to homo, but they would not by far be the whole story behind such "progress", with the other major components being chance and the properties of the environment.)

Neuron cell body diameters can range from the order of 1 micrometer to 100 micrometers, while diameters of neural processes can be on the scale of 10 to 0.1 micrometers, and synaptic boutons where neurons make contact with other neurons, range in size from 1 to 0.1 micrometers (these are all order-of-magnitude figures, so a minimum of 0.5 would be reduced to 0.1 while a maximum of 20 reduced to 10.) So, suppose we want to be excessively thorough and scan at 0.01 micron (10 nm) resolution. Further, let's assume a brain volume of a roughly 1,000 cc. That's 1,000 * (1,000,000^3), or 10^21 voxels. Suppose we want to store as much as 1000 bytes of information about every voxel.

This gives a total of 10^24 bytes, or 10^15 gigabytes of information -- which is probably more than the total storage capacity in the world today, but hardly 30 orders of magnitude more than a typical computer (actually, just about 15 orders of magnitude.) Clearly, modern storage media could not possibly support such an increase. However, modern storage is done in two dimensions, using millions of atoms per bit, and in a medium that wastes the majority of its area on wires and spacing between wires. I fully expect future storage devices to advance into the third dimension, and utilize their volume much more efficiently. As it stands, in my estimate I placed a byte of information in every cubic nanometer. That's not so bad, as a cubic nanometer can contain several hundred rather large atoms, which means that a few dozen atoms can be used for each bit. Granted, that's pretty efficient -- but with holography it just might be possible (so the storage medium might take the shape of optical crystals.) Even assuming the storage medium is 1000 times less efficient than the ideal I provided, it would still occupy a volume only a thousand times larger than the brain -- or about 1 cubic meter -- which would still be quite feasible.

Now, of course the above considers essentially uncompressed information. I am more than willing to bet that the storage requirements can be reduced by a few orders of magnitude -- by ignoring irrelevant tissue (such as blood vessels, cerebral ventricles, supportive tissue, etc.) and simply focusing on the neurons, as well as encoding information about each individual neuron in a more efficient way. Consider, for example, that for an adult ballpark of 10 billion neurons, the proposed storage capacity would contain as much as 100 terabytes per neuron -- which most reasonable people would consider ridiculously excessive. As a matter of fact, even a megabyte can encode an entire book's worth of information -- but to be extremely generous we can dump a whole gigabyte toward a single cell. That would peg the required storage capacity at 10 billion gigabytes, or 5 orders of magnitude less than the figure achieved via the simple scan computation. So instead of a cubic meter's worth of an advanced storage medium capable of storing a bit in every few thousand atoms, you'd only need about 1/100th the volume of the human brain -- a cube just about an inch and a half on the side.

The law of averages. You have yourself mentioned Brownian motion, and it is just one of the many sources of noise that the brain must contend with. Clearly, in order to perform reliably (quite important under natural selection pressures!) it cannot depend on mechanisms or scales under which useful information is easily overwhelmed by noise -- and so the brain's ultimate precision must be limited to quite above molecular. Consider, for example, that for every synaptic transmission thousands (if not millions) of ions flow across the membrane of the contacting boutons, and comparable amounts of neurotransmitter molecules flow across the synaptic cleft. Give or take a few dozen ions or molecules -- and you won't change a thing. As a matter of fact, much of the brain's processing occurs in an all-or-none, digital fashion (as in any type of processing that involves action potentials) -- which is precisely the same noise-negating strategy as the reason for moving from analog to digital music playback.

I don't know why you are so hung up on the microtome method. You're like an ancient Greek arguing that the Earth must be flat since if it weren't all the water would pool in one place -- you are stuck in a limited paradigm and you are claiming impossibility due to your own self-imposed limits of ignorance.

It is possible that other techniques such as MRI will be refined sufficiently to scan at submicron resolution. It is even possible that something like a refined microtome will indeed be used. The actual method of readback and transfer does not matter. What matters is the information that is transferred. And if the brain is properly prepared (i.e. maximally sedated to reduce all activity to virtual nil), then even over the duration of the scan the cognitively significant composition of the brain will not have a chance to drift.

Besides, death and the subsequent necrosis would be the epitome of brain damage, and such irreversible loss of information is precisely what MU will eventually help make obsolete.

And this addresses my point, how? If anything, you only confirmed that it's the same thing, only we use different words, etc. Machines, too, can be "ill" (worn down) or "injured" (damaged) and as a result close to breakdown ("death") unless urgently repaired ("healed").

No, I am identifying one with another, as a matter of tautology. You seem to be the one who is confused.

Enough evidence to fill very thick textbooks and thousands of journal pages. I can claim with equal success that there is no evidence for life on earth. As long as I plug my ears tightly enough, shut my eyes forcefully enough, and hum and blabber real loud, you would never be able to get through to me with actual evidence to the contrary. I'm getting tired of "no evidence". I've done my part to bring some to you. Now it's your turn to take some of that data you've obviously examined with great care, and tell us all why it is not evidence for evolution. I would be even more curious for evidence against evolution (as there is, for example, plenty of evidence against Biblical creationism.) Well actually no, I wouldn't really be so curious -- but at least then you'd be making some effort as opposed to playing the village idiot.

I would like to hear the argument that takes biochemistry of life into consideration, which would not "come to the conclusion..."

We know a lot more about biochemistry than we do about the cognitive mechanisms behind humor. Therefore, there is quite a bit more ground for considering the former -- and with the latter you allude to ignorance as proof of principle. Of course, that's perfectly normal for you -- religion epitomizes and feeds on ignorance.

My point was, that from any reference frame other than one co-moving with the Earth, the Earth is not stationary. Not only does the Earth orbit around the center of gravity of the solar system, it also orbits together with the solar system around the center of Milky Way, which in turn orbits around the local group, etc. The universe is in motion, and from any point of view among an infinity save one (i.e. geocentric), the Earth does not stand still. But even besides that, just why did you even bother to debate around this trivial point?

And now the ignorance and the shit start to pour forth en masse.

First of all, from any point of view in the observable universe, the surrounding universe will be observed to recede, and therefore be more red-shifted at larger distances. This is because spacetime is expanding symmetrically and everywhere. So yes, with regard to your question, the earth would appear equally red-shifted.

Secondly, just what the heck do you mean by "answer that <u>correctly</u>"? What, are you the judge of correctness around here -- or am I also supposed to prove to you that my answer is the correct one? (in which case, I'll save both of us a lot of work and point you to the nearest modern cosmology textbook, because I'm about to write one here.)

If you are as mal-informed about all the other science, evolution included, then it's no wonder you do not understand anything.

The "red-" shift is not a shift in color -- it is a uniform shift toward lower energy, lower frequency, or larger wavelength (all of which are equivalent), across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from the longest radio waves to the most energetic gamma rays. That means, that if you plot a spectrum of some very distant object as intensity versus wavelength, all of the element emission and absorption lines will be uniformly shifted to the right along the wavelength axis (toward greater wavelength) -- and the shift is a smooth monotonic function of distance no matter what direction you look, and the most consistent modern interpretation of that observation is that the photons literally get stretched out as they travel over long distances -- which is an indication that spacetime is continously expanding at every point, and has been so expanding for billions of years.

In physics, the lengthening of wavelength is called "red-shift" -- simply because in terms of visible frequencies it does shift the color toward the red, which is at the long-wavelength extreme of visible light. At the short-wavelength visible extreme is blue, so a shortening of wavelengths is termed "blue-shift". Wavelengths can only remain the same, get shorter or get longer. Thus, either no shift, blue shift, or red shift -- quite simply there is no such thing as "green-shift".

And redshift is not the only kind of shift observed in the universe. Blueshift is readily observable as a result of various physical phenomena. For example, when a large planet orbits a star, the star also orbits noticeably around the mutual center of gravity -- and so as a result the star periodically gets closer to earth, then moves away from earth, then gets closer again, etc. (assuming the star's plane of orbit is not too orthogonal to line of sight). So, as the star moves toward Earth its light gets blue-shifted, and as it moves away its light gets red-shifted (these are examples of Doppler shift, not the same cause of shift as postulated for astronomically very distant objects.) By detecting such oscillations in the star's spectrum, and combining them with other observations, astronomers can deduce the presence of the planet, and even calculate its approximate mass and orbit. This is exactly how all of the currently known extrasolar planets have been discovered. The only reason I mention this, is that if you were even a little up to date with modern science, you would have already known all of that (because extrasolar planets and the science behind them have been all over science headlines during the last decade.) Other (more down-to-Earth) examples of practical Doppler shift usage are police radar guns and the Doppler radar weather satellites.

A definition exists for evolution. It is really quite a very simple definition. If you actually read that talkorigins page I've pointed out to you a while ago, you would know that evolution is nothing other than the observation of past and ongoing change. That's it: evolution=change. Even you should be able to grasp that much. If only you weren't so stubborn in maintaining your ignorance...

I should say it is quite a bit of consolation to the millions who survived and thrived due to the "approximations" of medical "science." At any rate, next time your spouse becomes pregnant, I suggest you forego altogether the medical science and all of its practices, and have her bear your child to term without any medical support or intervention, give birth in the same manner, as well as perform postnatal care along the same lines. And if she leaves you in protest, then you can throw the Book at her. And the next time you get a flu, forget about science and enjoy the natural process. Oh, and if you haven't had appendicitis, then in case you get one eventually I'd be happy to watch your certain death in absense of any surgical intervention (that would indeed be natural selection of sorts; you might even win a Darwin award for that one.)

That is a possible danger, but nobody knows how approximation works on many-dimensional surfaces or indeed how likely it is that there could ever be a local maximum or minimum on such a surface with any kind of reasonable probability attached to its existence. I remind you that science is not a linear enterprise, and it is not using a single approximation algorithm but hundreds in parallel.

This very high-tech exchange between you and me is quite existent for the most part -- won't you agree?

Various branches of science can have more or less rigor associated with them. Concerning biased and falsified data, I would suggest that the social sciences are the most plagued while physical sciences are pretty much fool-proof (due to the fact that social sciences theorise about mostly unknown mechanisms of cognition, while physical sciences deal with well-understood mechanisms of matter.) You have been reading up too much on social construction of science, and you seem to have confused that limited view with actual reality. By the way, theories of social construction have already been thoroughly discredited and shown to reflect only a small facet of the scientific enterprise rather than the whole thing as they inherently tend to claim. Get with the times, old man.

Nonsense. Anyone engaged in a search for knowledge will reach incorrect conclusions based on incomplete data along the way. In your very own words, therefore, you end up stating (correctly enough) that the vast bulk of science is indeed the result of people searching for knowledge.

And I'm tired of you reading "negative" every time I say "positive". In case you forgot, numbers can be divided into three categories: negative, positive, and 0. Positive simply means greater than 0, or in other words it is a shorthand for "1 or more" when in the context of natural numbers.

But our environments place different emphasis on various colors. Thus, for example an Eskimo will have many different words to describe the various shades of white because snow dominates the environment of these people. It should have been obvious to you that perceptual background involves not only the types of things experienced, but also the scale and amount of such experiences as compared to other experiences. As a matter of fact, over large time scales languages are extremely reflective of the natural environment in which they exist (at least before the onset of large-scale global travel and information exchange) -- a well-known basic fact among linguists.

Plus, emergence and evolution of languages are not completely deterministic processes, and even given the exact same environment isolated populations will produce different languages with different lexicons. Even so, the languages will be precisely (if not necessarily graciously) translatable into each other -- as are any two human languages in all of history. After all, language is merely a vehicle for information exchange -- and information is information is information, no matter the format -- and as long as the fundamental tokens of two information sources are the same, the information sources remain compatible.

Contrary to your own remark that I've "never found Christianity", I can actually substantiate the observation that you obviously never learned what I have learned. Just look at this thread.

You have never shared my point of view, and it seems you would have to learn a great deal before you could even come close.

On the other hand, it is ridiculously easy to "learn" your point of view -- you have stated yourself on multiple occasions that one need only to stoop to the naivete of a child. I have no problem at all looking in through your warped looking glass. The real difference between you and me, is that I have never much liked intellectual tantrums, and I was never lazy where thought is concerned. That, and I was never coward enough to put barriers, protective or otherwise, between me and reality.

An even more extravagant assumption would be that you know anywhere near as much about what is going on in the universe as I do. You and the authors of your favorite religious fantasy, that is.

I guess we might be, if the "center" kept moving around all over the place. But sure, if you want to be the center of your universe, I'm not going to stop you. Just don't expect me not to laugh at you.

1. Then you get to experience the electromagnetic presense of the screen more directly, via repulsion between the electron shells of atoms composing the screen and those composing whatever it is you touch your screen with, resulting in deformation of pressure detectors in your skin, which send trains of impulses up your peripheral nervous system, up your spinal column and into your somatosensory cortex for further analysis.

2. My definition of "sight" involves a grid of detectors that capture photons and generate a representation of such input that is suitable for further analysis (e.g. a false-color image formed on a computer screen for scientists to look at within the visible spectrum.) IOW, "sight" is systematic detection of propagating disturbances in electromagnetic field, coupled to a methodology of deducing the location and properties of their causative sources. And before you launch into your dictionary again to disprove the validity of my definition of sight, let me tell you right away that such a digression won't be even close to the point of our discussion, and I'm not in the least interested in it.

Another perl of wisdom. Show me a flood that "stratifies" its sediments in kilometer-high layers of alternating A/B/A/B layers (where such enormous amounts of sediment would come from, how their radioactive isotope content could be "stratified", how come fossils are layered within 'epochs' of sediment from simpler to more complex, how come major volcanic dust eruptions spanning millions of years in-between are all "stratified" into neat and extremely thin layers among the sediment that match up around the world, the origin of the iron oxide bands in the oldest (deepest) rocks but not above are, among numerous other things, an entirely different issue...)

And you do have something to say about the changes in Earth's magnetic field that occur over geological time, recorded in magnetite deposits throughout sediment layers. Don't you? If you like, you might try to connect that with your claim of "rapid dissipation", or your claim of "rapid stratification".

Or perhaps you would care to explain how all those foraminifera were able to be born, build up their calcite skeletons, and die over the geologically infinitesimal period of this "flood" -- enough of them for their skeletons to compose sheets of limestone and marble hundreds of meters to kilometers in thickness.

Then again, I might plant your face into the blindingly obvious fact that flood-related sediment forms when material is carried by water from higher elevations to lower elevations. Thus, all life on the lower surface would be buried under a deep layer of sediment that has no fossils at all -- which is not even close to what is actually the case. While the higher surface would show extensive signs of erosion. There is not and never was enough high terrain on the continents to dump that much sediment onto the rest of the continental shelf, and most of the mountain ranges around the world are quite young (on the order of millions of years old) -- and do not show any signs of extensive erosion. Not to mention that even runoff will not explain the virtually uniform thickness of sediment on oceanic floor, even far away from any continents, nor will it explain the fact that oceanic sediments are not only geologically young but also do not contain terrestrial fossils.

In short, I can only conclude that you have never devoted even one erg of thought to this issue, and just blindly assumed that Bible is Truth.

Am I prepared to argue about the <u>pre-Flood</u> surface of the earth? You must be joking!

Then again, I'm curious to know where all that water came from, and where it has "dissipated" to, "rapidly" at that.

Or perhaps you could answer how come currently observed direction of slow deformation of the crust due to tectonic forces just happens to be in agreement with the deformation of the sediment layers. Unless of course you care to dispute the entire science of Geology and argue against plate tectonics. Though based on your past performance I won't be surprised if you do.

Normally, rocks are labelled not only by age, but also by fossil content. It's little wonder the two are always in excellent agreement, given a <u>reasonable</u> interpretation of all the data.

No, geological, geomagnetic, isotopic, fossil, mineralogical and I'm sure other analyses make it "multiple hundreds of millions of years old" -- though Pleistocene in particular is defined to span a period from approximately 10 thousand to 2 million years ago.

Well, I'd love to hear the explanation of how the crumpled and distorted ancient sediment layers containing older sea fossils got overlaid in the valleys by thick, neatly layered and nearly-horizontal layers containing land fossils -- all under the rubric of the same flood.

If that describes the formation of tectonic plates, then I've got a nice bridge to sell you. And as if that takes care of all the problems that are introduced into your "flood" myth by those very same tectonic plates.

Slap me silly, but I still don't see "movement of the tectonic plates" in these verses -- even after rereading it for the fifth time.

Sounds more like a description of an earthquake than of crust deformation. If anything, the ongoing crust deformation process is so ponderous that no human could notice it in action over their entire lifetime. Drastic convolutions of the crust do not result in smooth s-like deformations, but in outright breaks and faults -- and even such "drastic" convolutions are localized and do not do anything even remotely on the scale necessary to turn huge sediment plates from horizontal into vertical.

Spoken like someone whose entire world consisted of Egypt and the land of Judah. Not surprisingly.

And it wouldn't be like you to throw religious threats at an infidel, would it? I mean, you should have considered the possibility that instead of feeling threatened I will be amused (which I am, thank you.)

But seriously, I prefer reality as the judge of correctness when it comes to interpreting data -- far above myths and least of all religions.

You might as well ask what's the point of the water cycle. It's a physical process; it just happens.

We are a result of a physical process much the same as soap scum is a result of using your shower; we are a byproduct of the universe -- from condensation of matter, to formation of stars and galaxies, to production of heavy elements, to the solar system, to life on earth, to...

And if you think that you can stop change, then you are not only even more conservative than I suspected, but you are also a complete idiot.

On the other hand, humans are no longer subject to the same evolutionary processes that contributed to the rise of our species. We are now in control of our environment, and in control even of our own genetic (as well as beyond genetic) destiny. From this point in history onward, humanity enters an entirely new phase of development previously unparalleled on this planet -- we are moving beyond the classical "evolution", and into the stage of deliberate self-design.

Unlearn what you have learned, my young apprentice. God was one of Lenin's lesser concerns; the biggest problem and the highest goal always consisted in obtaining social justice. I'm not going to tell you to read Lenin to see for yourself -- because I know you will not -- but if you did, you would realize that you have swallowed a Christian propaganda piece hook, line and sinker.

I don't know, are labor unions not American enough for you? How about Social Security? Unemployment and Disability insurance? Free public education? Wellfare? The concepts of public property and public land? Government-controlled public utilities? Vast public-works projects, such as for example the freeway system?

Restricting <u>excessive</u> reproduction is not eugenics. It does not single anyone out, least of all on genetic basis.

And since you think that technology is Communist, then I suppose your suggestion is that we all pray real hard, and the world's problems will just magically go away. Let me just say I'm glad not all people in this world are like you.

Holy shit, you don't say? And which antisemitic myth would you care to regurgitate next?

You could start with a basic High School course in Government.

Yeah, if Catholic is the same thing as Greek Orthodox -- which I'm pretty sure it isn't. Then again, if "true" Christians are like the "salt in your food", and it doesn't take that many, then I'm sure Russia always had more than its share of them. Besides, it's U.S. that is overwhelmingly Catholic.

No shit! Why, then India must be doing infinitely better than Japan, since it also at some point went from 0% to 1%, and it has 10 times more people!

That's Orthodox (Byzantine) Christians, not Catholics -- they often regard themselves as the prime keepers of the one true faith. Just to rub your ignorant face into it.

That, and the overwhelming proportion of Indian Christians are Catholics. And since the population doubled, then you'd expect all the cultural figures to double accordingly.

Of course, economics is not ordained by God, and neither are social institutions. So, drop this nonsense, will you? You've beaten this dead horse into a bloody goo already, and you're only looking more demented with time. I almost feel guilty doing this to you (if it weren't so much fun...)