Jun 6 2011: That God is a human concept is undeniable. Everything we can talk about is a human concept, including physics and whatever other science you want to discuss.
What seems to be common about the God concept is that it fills a very specific role: It's that which stands for the singularities about existence. For example, it is impossible for anyone in the universe to have a plan for the universe. Thus God is/has the plan. It is impossible for anyone in the universe to know everything about the universe. But God knows everything. It is impossible to have all power or to be everywhere, so that's just what God has and does.
So, God is just what we (or anything in existence) cannot be. God is thus fundamentally unknowable. And yet because the definition or derivation of God as "the singularity" is so commonly conceived by most any human mind, God is very commonly recognized and "believed in" and we find it easy to reference God commonly. "There must be a God" most would say, and they are both right and wrong. It's correct that there must be this common concept of God because it is a naturally emergent construct of the human mind doing what it does well. But on the other hand, God can have no "real" existence because God's definition is in effect "that which cannot exist in reality as we know it". Yet, one can just as well say from the same singularity derivation, "God encompasses ALL of existence". God's "nonexistence in reality" and "existence as the entirety" are both correct!
Believers typically focus on God's nature as the entirety and then anthropomorphize the concept to ease discussing God's expression, i.e. the revelation of the universe to humanity. OK, fine, but this "humanizing" of God is one place where Godness gets on a messy and slippery slope toward confusion. Then of course when God's "will" enters the fray, you're in the realm of pure politics, so watch out!
Jun 6 2011: Religion has 2 important components: individual and political.
People will answer all kinds of things about the truth about their religion in its individual aspects, and they can never be wrong about that part. That they're born into it is just fine and natural, and as such it can be very "true" to them. There's no problem with any of that part. In the internal and spiritual realm, there's nothing wrong with religion and the common truths about it are not too important.
The political side of religion is the dangerous and problematic one. Religion has since its inception been used to rally, motivate, pacify, vilify, etc. groups of people in order to meet the aims of those who hold some power and wish to wield more. All of those niggling denominations and factions within religion were created in power struggles between two political rivals attempting to secure or increase their influence or power.
To answer your question, skilled users of the political side of religion talk about religion from its personal aspects in order to make people identify with it strongly and remain relatively ignorant of the political goals they're actually working out. So for example they will point to the statements of a heretic and inflame personal feelings of indignation against personal deeply held beliefs which those believers need to be true in order for the religion-laced story of their lives to persist meaningfully. In this way, gaps are created between groups, and the indignation can be used to exert pressure against the declared heretics. The more skilled the politician (or despot) at making these personal beliefs result in more intense actions in their favor, the more power he wields, and that niggling distinction he made to effect his will becomes an enshrined belief (denom, religion) among those who did his will.
This last step, the solidification of the issue as a deep belief happens because the used individuals must cling to it to justify their own inhumane actions.
Jun 5 2011: Matt, this just happens to be my topic of muse of late. Here's my summary interpretation, and I'd be interested in your comments:
Our minds are capable of positing a perspective in which determinism becomes valid or possible (as in your original post). But that we can imagine that position does not make that position real, meaningful, accessible, or relevant. In effect, the perspective from which determinism takes on meaning is the perspective of God. And I don't believe in God except as a mental construct defined in just this sort of way. The only way this God is an actor in the universe is in the way that mental construct eventually translates causally through the human will.
In this sense, there's nothing at all real about determinism. But of course "reality" is a decidedly and unavoidably human interpretation. Unlike some others, I don't then say that reality is illusion, because what's important about reality is that we can agree on it and apply our understanding of it in ways which affect each other meaningfully. We can count on this reality when interacting with it and each other. Meaning and all the other stuff which makes up human experience derives from this reality. And that reality is enough for us by definition!
So I'm all for exploring reality... that's what it's all about really. There are limits to reality, though, both practical and theoretical. And these limits are far deeper (more significant) than those like quantum uncertainty and trans-light speeds. Those deeper limits, ironically enough, stem from the fact that reality exists only by a sort of consensus of experience. How's that for a logical loop?!
Drop me a line sometime, Matt. We could have some killer conversations I bet! Send me an email.
Jun 5 2011: I'm cool with this interpretation except for one part: A position is taken about going faster than light, ie. that time would go backward under those conditions. Leave that faster than light stuff out of it, and I see something worth exploring here.
Can you tell me more about just what would be meant by "at the speed of light is a sort of equilibrium of time"?
It's plausible to me that the "ambiguity of state" of a given "particle" is somehow proportional to its speed. I mean, how fast does an electron travel? Is its location equally ambiguous?
What Aaron's talk suggests too, though, is that getting the energy of something near 0 (very slow?) also makes it become ambiguous. (?)
Perhaps what both directions are suggesting is that the more unobservable something is, due to it's being too fast or too dark and quiet, its state becomes more ambiguous. But isn't that just stating the obvious?
Jun 5 2011: You're following one important train of thought already in the forward-looking mode. You (like I) want to know if there is any "news" that can be injected into the universe without breaking any of the rules. Be that news "random" fluctuations in the ongoing revelation of quantum particles' states or (more interestingly) the "free" decisions of sentient beings, we want to know if the universe is actually still forking along paths of possibility with ends unknown and unknowable. The key here is about the unknowableness. I think it's relatively easy to see that the twists and turns are indeed unknowable and dependent on decisions we make because of the deep nature of the unknowableness we can understand in taking the inquiry in the opposite direction:
William Poundstone's "The Recursive Universe" uses Conway's Game of Life (CGOL) to elucidate some things about the real world. For one thing he shows how for a particular state of the game board in CGOL, one can always know the very next state (and therefore all subsequent) exactly, but one cannot determine the previous state with any certainty. This is for the simple reason that for almost all CGOL states, there are very many possible preceding states. The key point here is that the laws of CGOL, like the laws of physics, place detailed constraints on how one state transitions to another, but this does not mean it's possible to project backwards in time to identify prior states.
Understanding this, one sees that your question presupposes something deeply impossible and is therefore flawed. It will never be possible to discover the initial state of the universe, nor to know the full extent of the current state. It's deeply unknowable, or perhaps "fundamentally irrelevant". For this reason the question (which is still a good question, I'm glad you posed it) is only a fantasy (no dis intended).
The complete universe is exactly and only self-evident. No template, no model, no knower, no parallel applies. For us, anyway.
Aug 6 2010: WOW! This is a demonstration which only by the development of software and hardware device applications means that ANYTHING is possible merely by thinking it! I'm surprised we're at this stage already!
Aug 4 2010: If you were on the Titanic after it became obvious what the fate of the boat was, the first thing you'd seek is a lifeboat, the safe and mainline option. But once that option proved to be unavailable, what then? Do you go for the bizarre (irrational?) reaction and try something nearly insane, or do you go for the "safe" option, like hiding in a corner of the boat? I would speculate that in catastrophic situations throughout the eons, it's the crazy one who got the evolutionary advantage. This is at least one reasonable speculation supporting the idea that "irrationality" is a more correct (rational?) approach in an environment trending toward loss and failure. The mammal that dared jump through the fire may have been the only one who survived.
On the other hand, if you're part of a bigger trend that's carrying you upward in its swell, playing it safe seems like the right course. You count your blessings, hang on tight, and try not to jinx your good fortune as you ride it upward.
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A reply on Talk: Dan Barber's foie gras parable
A reply on Conversation: Refuting a quantum mechanics theory
That's an easy one to answer: The existence of the universe (or if you prefer, the initial conditions of the big bang) is without cause.
So it's not a stretch to propose that similar causes to that which initiated the big bang continue to be at work in the universe.
A comment on Conversation: Who is God?
What seems to be common about the God concept is that it fills a very specific role: It's that which stands for the singularities about existence. For example, it is impossible for anyone in the universe to have a plan for the universe. Thus God is/has the plan. It is impossible for anyone in the universe to know everything about the universe. But God knows everything. It is impossible to have all power or to be everywhere, so that's just what God has and does.
So, God is just what we (or anything in existence) cannot be. God is thus fundamentally unknowable. And yet because the definition or derivation of God as "the singularity" is so commonly conceived by most any human mind, God is very commonly recognized and "believed in" and we find it easy to reference God commonly. "There must be a God" most would say, and they are both right and wrong. It's correct that there must be this common concept of God because it is a naturally emergent construct of the human mind doing what it does well. But on the other hand, God can have no "real" existence because God's definition is in effect "that which cannot exist in reality as we know it". Yet, one can just as well say from the same singularity derivation, "God encompasses ALL of existence". God's "nonexistence in reality" and "existence as the entirety" are both correct!
Believers typically focus on God's nature as the entirety and then anthropomorphize the concept to ease discussing God's expression, i.e. the revelation of the universe to humanity. OK, fine, but this "humanizing" of God is one place where Godness gets on a messy and slippery slope toward confusion. Then of course when God's "will" enters the fray, you're in the realm of pure politics, so watch out!
A comment on Conversation: Why do the believers believe in only one religion?
People will answer all kinds of things about the truth about their religion in its individual aspects, and they can never be wrong about that part. That they're born into it is just fine and natural, and as such it can be very "true" to them. There's no problem with any of that part. In the internal and spiritual realm, there's nothing wrong with religion and the common truths about it are not too important.
The political side of religion is the dangerous and problematic one. Religion has since its inception been used to rally, motivate, pacify, vilify, etc. groups of people in order to meet the aims of those who hold some power and wish to wield more. All of those niggling denominations and factions within religion were created in power struggles between two political rivals attempting to secure or increase their influence or power.
To answer your question, skilled users of the political side of religion talk about religion from its personal aspects in order to make people identify with it strongly and remain relatively ignorant of the political goals they're actually working out. So for example they will point to the statements of a heretic and inflame personal feelings of indignation against personal deeply held beliefs which those believers need to be true in order for the religion-laced story of their lives to persist meaningfully. In this way, gaps are created between groups, and the indignation can be used to exert pressure against the declared heretics. The more skilled the politician (or despot) at making these personal beliefs result in more intense actions in their favor, the more power he wields, and that niggling distinction he made to effect his will becomes an enshrined belief (denom, religion) among those who did his will.
This last step, the solidification of the issue as a deep belief happens because the used individuals must cling to it to justify their own inhumane actions.
A reply on Conversation: Refuting a quantum mechanics theory
A reply on Conversation: Refuting a quantum mechanics theory
Our minds are capable of positing a perspective in which determinism becomes valid or possible (as in your original post). But that we can imagine that position does not make that position real, meaningful, accessible, or relevant. In effect, the perspective from which determinism takes on meaning is the perspective of God. And I don't believe in God except as a mental construct defined in just this sort of way. The only way this God is an actor in the universe is in the way that mental construct eventually translates causally through the human will.
In this sense, there's nothing at all real about determinism. But of course "reality" is a decidedly and unavoidably human interpretation. Unlike some others, I don't then say that reality is illusion, because what's important about reality is that we can agree on it and apply our understanding of it in ways which affect each other meaningfully. We can count on this reality when interacting with it and each other. Meaning and all the other stuff which makes up human experience derives from this reality. And that reality is enough for us by definition!
So I'm all for exploring reality... that's what it's all about really. There are limits to reality, though, both practical and theoretical. And these limits are far deeper (more significant) than those like quantum uncertainty and trans-light speeds. Those deeper limits, ironically enough, stem from the fact that reality exists only by a sort of consensus of experience. How's that for a logical loop?!
Drop me a line sometime, Matt. We could have some killer conversations I bet! Send me an email.
A reply on Conversation: Refuting a quantum mechanics theory
Can you tell me more about just what would be meant by "at the speed of light is a sort of equilibrium of time"?
It's plausible to me that the "ambiguity of state" of a given "particle" is somehow proportional to its speed. I mean, how fast does an electron travel? Is its location equally ambiguous?
What Aaron's talk suggests too, though, is that getting the energy of something near 0 (very slow?) also makes it become ambiguous. (?)
Perhaps what both directions are suggesting is that the more unobservable something is, due to it's being too fast or too dark and quiet, its state becomes more ambiguous. But isn't that just stating the obvious?
A comment on Conversation: Refuting a quantum mechanics theory
William Poundstone's "The Recursive Universe" uses Conway's Game of Life (CGOL) to elucidate some things about the real world. For one thing he shows how for a particular state of the game board in CGOL, one can always know the very next state (and therefore all subsequent) exactly, but one cannot determine the previous state with any certainty. This is for the simple reason that for almost all CGOL states, there are very many possible preceding states. The key point here is that the laws of CGOL, like the laws of physics, place detailed constraints on how one state transitions to another, but this does not mean it's possible to project backwards in time to identify prior states.
Understanding this, one sees that your question presupposes something deeply impossible and is therefore flawed. It will never be possible to discover the initial state of the universe, nor to know the full extent of the current state. It's deeply unknowable, or perhaps "fundamentally irrelevant". For this reason the question (which is still a good question, I'm glad you posed it) is only a fantasy (no dis intended).
The complete universe is exactly and only self-evident. No template, no model, no knower, no parallel applies. For us, anyway.
A comment on Talk: Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves
A comment on Talk: Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours
On the other hand, if you're part of a bigger trend that's carrying you upward in its swell, playing it safe seems like the right course. You count your blessings, hang on tight, and try not to jinx your good fortune as you ride it upward.