84 replies to this topic

[Seeker79]

Liquid Gardens, on 09 January 2013 - 04:20 PM, said:

I'm not quite following the reasoning here.  Are you just saying that in any infinite amount of time we should expect everything conceivable (and inconceivable) to have actually existed?

No not anything conceivable only things that have a chance to exist. For example, a giant solid gold planet can physically exist in this universe but there is no probable process for it to arise. I suppose a super developed alian race could search the galaxy for all it's hold and create one.. But for what purpose?

This is an example of something that can exist but will never exist.

Other things however like intelligence, sentience, can and do exist. The benefit of sentience is that it's remarkably good at reproducing itself therefore selection will favor it. Intelligent sentience should at some point pervade the universe. Looking backwards, it's likely that it already has.

We can us AI as an example. If we ever manage to create AI worlds and universes, we then proove that it can be done. If we make multiples of them ( and we would) then we have a statistic. Let's say that 1% of all intelligent races create 100 ai universes.

Do you see what happens now? 99% of all sentient life and their environments should be a creation of another. There is no reason to assume our universe is the top of the food chain. In all likely hood we are within the 99%. All we have to do is accomplish created AI worlds ( and we are very close), then the odds of us being created jump way up. If you look at quantum mechanics some of the fundamental laws of nature behave very digital like.

In an infinit of existence anything that has a probability of happening will and already did. This would mean highly evolved sentience as well. Its really the only answer to the anthropic principal.

[Sherapy]

joc, on 07 January 2013 - 04:55 AM, said:

I have to say, I don't think anything will ever fill it.  I think you have actually achieved something quite remarkable.  The Empty Space.  That is about as real as it can get from my perspective.

Starting from I do not know-- is as good as place as any regardless of the path one treks.

[Liquid Gardens]

Seeker79, on 09 January 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

No not anything conceivable only things that have a chance to exist.

Good point, I agree that is more precise and correct.  However we don't know which things that are conceivable don't have a chance to exist, and in the context of this discussion, we actually need to know that something has an exactly 0% chance to exist, otherwise given an eternity it will.

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For example, a giant solid gold planet can physically exist in this universe but there is no probable process for it to arise. I suppose a super developed alian race could search the galaxy for all it's hold and create one.. But for what purpose?

This is an example of something that can exist but will never exist.

I'm not sure that I agree on this.  The process by which a gold planet arises needs to not just be at the level of 'not probable', it has to be impossible, correct?  Otherwise I'm not sure why, "In an infinity of existence anything that has a probability of happening will and already did.", wouldn't apply. (And thinking about it further, I don't know that I necessarily am sure that anything that can happen will happen given an infinity, it sounds logical, but infinity is tricky and I'm not a math/philosophy pro. An infinite set of numbers does not have to contain all possible numbers; it may just come down to how we're definining 'probability' in this sense.)

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Other things however like intelligence, sentience, can and do exist. The benefit of sentience is that it's remarkably good at reproducing itself therefore selection will favor it. Intelligent sentience should at some point pervade the universe. Looking backwards, it's likely that it already has.

We can us AI as an example. If we ever manage to create AI worlds and universes, we then proove that it can be done. If we make multiples of them ( and we would) then we have a statistic. Let's say that 1% of all intelligent races create 100 ai universes.

Do you see what happens now? 99% of all sentient life and their environments should be a creation of another. There is no reason to assume our universe is the top of the food chain. In all likely hood we are within the 99%. All we have to do is accomplish created AI worlds ( and we are very close), then the odds of us being created jump way up. If you look at quantum mechanics some of the fundamental laws of nature behave very digital like.

Hmm, I guess 'AI' means something a little different to me, I'm not sure that AI as it's usually defined is typically referred to as 'sentient', if I'm following you correctly.  Are you saying that the term 'AI' as you are using it covers humans also?  If so, I don't think 'we are very close' to creating AI worlds populated with creatures that have sentience in the same way we do, but I may just be unclear on what you mean.  Although what it would take to make a 'sentient' AI and how we'd know is a very interesting question, no doubt.

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In an infinit of existence anything that has a probability of happening will and already did. This would mean highly evolved sentience as well. Its really the only answer to the anthropic principal.

But I think the question then gets moved to, 'what things are actually possible and how do we know they are?', under this framework, and we are kinda presuming that 'highly evolved sentience', to the god/aggregate consciousness level, is possible.  Spider webs exist, and I can envision a scenario that due to selective pressures over an infinity of existence that spider webs may evolve to be unbreakable, it might be possible.  But how do I know?  It doesn't seem that just because intelligence (spider webs) exists doesn't really give us all the information we need to then say that god (unbreakable webs) will likely exist given an infinity.  As far as the anthropic principle it's always seemed to me somewhat obvious and banal, although there is a lot of interesting discussion surrounding it.  Thought provoking stuff regardless!

[dan-paul-mark]

if anyone has an opinion on this, i think its a nice idea that maybe god is simply a personification of the idea that everything constists of the same matter and the 'miracle' that is the universe is run by a series of rules and forces that regulate it allowing life to develop as well as the existence of some pretty beautiful and amazing things. although i don't agree with christains they have a good opinion, perhaps they just take it too literally.

[Diablo Blanco]

How can a god be alien in a universe that IT created? I don't get it.

[ranrod]

nopeda, on 18 December 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

God might not exist. That covers that. God might exist. That opens infinite possibilities. For years I've been trying to think realistically about how God could exist, and here is a list of basic ideas in an attempt to do so:

1. If God exists he almost certainly would have to be an alien.

2. If there is a creator associated with this planet, all
who refer to him refer to the same being regardless of what
they call him or what they think about him.

3. Nothing that happens is supernatural, so anything gods do
would be natural for them.

4. If God exists and wants things to be as they are, he
could not provide proof of his existence because doing
so would change things too much.

5. Since the terms omnipotent and omniscient appear to
make themselves impossible, it's unrealistic to try assigning
those particular characteristics to God if he exists.

6. Since disbelief is a form of belief, the degree of faith a
person has that God does not exist is what determines how
strong an atheist he or she is, or is not.

7. People who have put their faith in a belief often/usually find
it impossible to comprehend the ability of considering the possibility
that God does not exist and also the possibility that he does.

8. People who have put their faith in a belief often/usually find
it impossible to comprehend much less appreciate basic number 2.

9. People who claim to be strong atheists often/usually asburdly
try to deny their own faith that God does not exist...faith which is
a necessary part of being a strong atheist.

10. Whether God exists or not it seems apparent that life must have
originated from lifelessness to begin with, and may do it fairly often.

11. We should not allow what appear to be conflicting or unlikely
beliefs encouraged by other people--however absurd--to contaminate
and interfere with our own attempts to think about this topic
realistically.

12. We should not allow childlike and unrealistic attempts at comparing
the concept of gods with those of childlike ideas like the tooth fairy,
the Easter Bunny, invisible pink unicorns, spaghetti monsters etc
encouraged by other people--however absurd--to contaminate and interfere
with our own attempts to think about this topic realistically.

13. If gods exist they would necessarily have to be technologically
advanced far beyond we humans on Earth, to the point that they became
gods.

14. If God exists he almost certainly would not be restricted to any
particular body, form, or gender. (disclaimer: I refer to God as "he" out
of convenience and because that's how we are encouraged to refer to "him"
in most if not all canonical texts.)

15. If God exists it seems most likely that he has as much influence
over the content of canonical texts as he wants to have.

16. If God exists, it seems quite clear he makes use of the evolutionary
method of creation.

17. If there are things which people consider to be spiritual, they are
most likely actually physical in ways we just can't appreciate yet.

6. is wrong.  Lacking belief is not the same as believing in negation.  Theists make their claim, and an atheist is unswayed by those arguments.  If you don't believe in the tooth fairy (to use your example), I wouldn't say you are believer in the anti-tooth fairy religion.  A believer incorporates the lessons, values, morals, etc of a belief.  Not being convinced by someone's argument doesn't change my morals or ethics in the least.  At any rate, if we call non-beliefs beliefs in the negation, then we are believer of an infinite amount of beliefs (i.e. it's meaningless).
9. In your quest to define a certain view of a god (most similar to Yahweh by your description), I don't understand why writing (6) or (9) is relevant.  Ridicule is often used to illustrate a point.  Believing in one thing without evidence wholeheartedly is the same as believing anything else without evidence.  A belief in any of the ridiculous things you mentioned is as valid as Yahweh, Ra, or any other human created notion of a god.  There's an infinite amount of possibilities for what a god or gods be.  Just look at Karmanaut or imagine this universe is a program running in a computer simulation.  There can be many gods, no gods, one god, trillions of gods, etc.  Any possibility outside or our realm is as possible as anything else.  The Giant Spaghetti Moster is as likely as Yahweh since there is no concrete evidence for either.  Who knows, the Spaghetti monster could have presented to us by divine inspiration.

I like the overall premise though.  Keep the anti-atheist agenda out of it.
1.  Of course Yahweh would be an alien - he wasn't born on Earth.
14. You are alluding to Yahweh.  He is male and made man in his image (we're supposed to look like him).  In the realm of the un-provable (i.e. fantasy) that's not a bad thing.  Again imagine this universe exists as a simulation in a supercomputer somewhere.  People accessing the program could look like us and skewed evolution in the simulation to create beings that look like them.  Maybe even added some special code to us once we look like them to make us extra special.
17. Of course his powers would come to him naturally.

[ranrod]

Hazrus, on 10 January 2013 - 05:11 AM, said:

How can a god be alien in a universe that IT created? I don't get it.

If he created Earth, he wasn't born in it (i.e. he's an alien - he comes from another world or universe or realm of existence).

[Seeker79]

Liquid Gardens, on 10 January 2013 - 12:45 AM, said:

Good point, I agree that is more precise and correct.  However we don't know which things that are conceivable don't have a chance to exist, and in the context of this discussion, we actually need to know that something has an exactly 0% chance to exist, otherwise given an eternity it will.



I'm not sure that I agree on this.  The process by which a gold planet arises needs to not just be at the level of 'not probable', it has to be impossible, correct?  Otherwise I'm not sure why, "In an infinity of existence anything that has a probability of happening will and already did.", wouldn't apply. (And thinking about it further, I don't know that I necessarily am sure that anything that can happen will happen given an infinity, it sounds logical, but infinity is tricky and I'm not a math/philosophy pro. An infinite set of numbers does not have to contain all possible numbers; it may just come down to how we're definining 'probability' in this sense.)



Hmm, I guess 'AI' means something a little different to me, I'm not sure that AI as it's usually defined is typically referred to as 'sentient', if I'm following you correctly.  Are you saying that the term 'AI' as you are using it covers humans also?  If so, I don't think 'we are very close' to creating AI worlds populated with creatures that have sentience in the same way we do, but I may just be unclear on what you mean.  Although what it would take to make a 'sentient' AI and how we'd know is a very interesting question, no doubt.



But I think the question then gets moved to, 'what things are actually possible and how do we know they are?', under this framework, and we are kinda presuming that 'highly evolved sentience', to the god/aggregate consciousness level, is possible.  Spider webs exist, and I can envision a scenario that due to selective pressures over an infinity of existence that spider webs may evolve to be unbreakable, it might be possible.  But how do I know?  It doesn't seem that just because intelligence (spider webs) exists doesn't really give us all the information we need to then say that god (unbreakable webs) will likely exist given an infinity.  As far as the anthropic principle it's always seemed to me somewhat obvious and banal, although there is a lot of interesting discussion surrounding it.  Thought provoking stuff regardless!

Yeah. I don't know much about set theory either. But there can only be a certain amount of combinations for any set. But those sets can then form even larger sets. Evenchually it must be able spell out the library of congress. Some times I sit and stare at mandlbrot sets in awe of the potential... I even have an app. It's called "Julia danceing"

The other problem that we are dealing with here is the numbers can can only aproximate nature. I feel like we may be missing something trying to understand the universe only through math. It's obviously effective, but what if the universe ultimately simply dosnt follow mathematical principals. Quantum mechanics shows us that fundamental reality Is far from logical and numbers are the ultimate expression of logic.

You might be interested in the documentary "transcendence man"

I understand what you mean by the spider web. The spider web is from the spider. The spider should at some point evolve to not need webs.

This brings up the usefulness of intelligent sentience. Human beings are only 200,000 years old and we are perfectly capable of destroying ourselves with the literal press of a button, we are causing the earths fifth mass extinction, we are out if sync with the rythems of nature and god knows what else. It may turn out that sentience is actually an evolutionary dead end for a species

Edited by Seeker79, 10 January 2013 - 06:29 AM.

[ranrod]

Seeker79, on 10 January 2013 - 06:19 AM, said:

The other problem that we are dealing with here is the numbers can can only aproximate nature. I feel like we may be missing something trying to understand the universe only through math. It's obviously effective, but what if the universe ultimately simply dosnt follow mathematical principals. Quantum mechanics shows us that fundamental reality Is far from logical and numbers are the ultimate expression of logic.

I agree in that it might require us to move away from pure equations to find greater answers, but in that other mathematical methods might need to be applied.  The underlying workings might be so complex that we might never come up with a master formula for how it works.  However, we may be able to come up with an analytical solution to the problem.  There are many applications that use analytical systems, rather than formulas, to simulate physical events (specially dealing with fluids).

Quantum mechanics has been so misunderstood.  Schrodinger's analogy was a huge disservice.  The original notion was simply that it is impossible to know a particle's position and velocity simultaneously.  Basically because anything we threw at particles to find out their position or velocity would alter it.  It's not even true in all cases.  Other aspects of particles came to light and were incorporated into the field, though nothing 'magical' (electron positions not being discrete, particles escaping from nuclei, etc).  At any rate, the field deals with probabilities rather than neat equations because of this.  Basically anything probabilistic rather than discrete which is about everything at the subatomic level..

[Seeker79]

ranrod, on 10 January 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

I agree in that it might require us to move away from pure equations to find greater answers, but in that other mathematical methods might need to be applied.  The underlying workings might be so complex that we might never come up with a master formula for how it works.  However, we may be able to come up with an analytical solution to the problem.  There are many applications that use analytical systems, rather than formulas, to simulate physical events (specially dealing with fluids).

Quantum mechanics has been so misunderstood.  Schrodinger's analogy was a huge disservice.  The original notion was simply that it is impossible to know a particle's position and velocity simultaneously.  Basically because anything we threw at particles to find out their position or velocity would alter it.  It's not even true in all cases.  Other aspects of particles came to light and were incorporated into the field, though nothing 'magical' (electron positions not being discrete, particles escaping from nuclei, etc).  At any rate, the field deals with probabilities rather than neat equations because of this.  Basically anything probabilistic rather than discrete which is about everything at the subatomic level..

Quantum 'fuzziness' is not simply a detection problem from particles altering each other. Quantum tunneling proves this. Uncertainty does not make it look 'fuzzy' it ACTUALLY is fuzzy. The quantum eraser also shows is that it is not a detection particle that interfears causing the collapse of a wave function. It's simply that the  information can be known.  The collapse of the wave function can be initiated anytime or anywhere... Even the future. It's not a physical process it's an information process not bound by space nor time.

[ranrod]

Seeker79, on 10 January 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

Quantum 'fuzziness' is not simply a detection problem from particles altering each other. Quantum tunneling proves this. Uncertainty does not make it look 'fuzzy' it ACTUALLY is fuzzy. The quantum eraser also shows is that it is not a detection particle that interfears causing the collapse of a wave function. It's simply that the  information can be known.  The collapse of the wave function can be initiated anytime or anywhere... Even the future. It's not a physical process it's an information process not bound by space nor time.

I don't want to get into a big QM discussion here, but after studying it, I don't see anything magical in it, as implied by many new-age hippies (these hippies include some college professors but mostly pseudo-scientists).
I do agree that the search for deeper formulas might hit a wall and we might need a different mathematical/analytical approach.

[Rlyeh]

Seeker79, on 10 January 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

Quantum 'fuzziness' is not simply a detection problem from particles altering each other. Quantum tunneling proves this. Uncertainty does not make it look 'fuzzy' it ACTUALLY is fuzzy. The quantum eraser also shows is that it is not a detection particle that interfears causing the collapse of a wave function. It's simply that the  information can be known.  The collapse of the wave function can be initiated anytime or anywhere... Even the future. It's not a physical process it's an information process not bound by space nor time.

And it has already been pointed out to you before the "information" is the physical path of the photon. The path gets modified, it affects the photons. It's therefore physical.

Edited by Rlyeh, 10 January 2013 - 09:07 AM.

[Seeker79]

Rlyeh, on 10 January 2013 - 09:05 AM, said:

And it has already been pointed out to you before the "information" is the physical path of the photon. The path gets modified, it affects the photons. It's therefore physical.

There is no path of the photon. It's a probability function until detection. It literally is in both places and none. That's what a wave function is. As has been explained to you, there is no photon particle until an action has been taken to detect it. If this were not true there would be no such thing as quantum tunneling and real effects like the josephson junction would not work.

[Seeker79]

ranrod, on 10 January 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

I don't want to get into a big QM discussion here, but after studying it, I don't see anything magical in it, as implied by many new-age hippies (these hippies include some college professors but mostly pseudo-scientists).
I do agree that the search for deeper formulas might hit a wall and we might need a different mathematical/analytical approach.

Nothing 'magical 'hippie' like was implied. I guess because Somone is a hippie, they are unable to come to solid conclusions?

Quantum tunneling and 'fuzziness' of QM indeed acts like magic or at least is very counter intuitive. Retrocausality, instantaneous reaction, teleportation. That's all my point was. These things obviously play an important role in fundamental reality. You don't have to burn incense and prey to the universal quantum mind while balancing on your head in the lotus position, but to dismiss the potentiality of our discoveries because it sounds 'hippie' like and disagrees with physical fundamentalism and materialist philosophy is simply being closed minded and engaging in dogma. The truth of the matter is that we do not and Mabey cannot understand fundamental reality and since everything is built from fundamental reality, we don't really understand precived reality. It's the difference between a "Jackass" and a "foolish jackass" ( Dan Millman ----"The way of the peaceful Warrior")

[Beany]

There are alternatives to the traditional Christian perspective, i.e. pantheism & transcendentalism. Native American spirituality & the West African tradition, Ifa, also have something to offer. Sometimes information from outside sources helps to clarify the issue, as it brings us new information and lets us think outside the box instead of trying to organize what's already in the box so that it makes some sort of sense to us. There's a lot of wisdom in the world with no access barriers.