Imagine your typical Linux system - right out of the box. Take a bumper sticker and slap it on the back of the computer's box. Give it infinite memory and instantaneous execution time. Have the most proficient programmers imaginable write a perfect AI system that is a trillion times more intelligent than any human and is truly self-aware. Feed into that program the stored knowledge of all humanity.

The only restriction is that you don't tell it that it is a self-aware software program. It "believes" it is exploring the virtual world that was programmed into it. It has senses, memories. It can ask questions and interact with all the artificial life programmed into the system.

Now, ignoring any technically-correct-but-obviously-not-in-the-spirit-of-the-question answers, how will that program be able to know what is written on the bumper sticker?

Something created the box within which every physical law that will ever be discovered by man resides. We can never know what is outside this box. Whatever is outside of the box is what I call the creator.

That's seems a pretty religious idea, I thought you are anti-religious

I am anti-religious.

(from Wikipedia):
A religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.


I used to be a strong atheist but the infinite regression of "well what happened before that...." forced me into having to choose between:
* a universe that had "always" existed and was its own cause and effect
* a universe that came into existence due to some influence that emanated from outside of the universe's reality

This outside influence (whatever it is) is the "creator" of our existence.

You can't use Wikipedia as a dictionary.

Religion is simply a set of beliefs, shared by more than one person.

If more people thought about this simulated reality thing you are suggesting, it would also be religion

If fact, I am very religious, yet I don't belong to any church or do any kind of rituals or sacraments,
my religion is my thought

That's nice, but it makes the assumption that something must consciously create the computer. That is a true assumption that makes your analogy innapropriate.

Of course artificial life was created. It's artificial. Meaning it cannot exist without something designing and creating it. Unlike biological organisms which can change, mutate, mitose/produce offspring, die ect. There have been many extinctions during Earths time, some wiping out large percentages of all life, some allowing the rapid growth of certain animals. A large percentage of animal life or plant like what you see around you today wasn't here 40million years ago (for example).

However have a thousand linux computers with the same self aware program all connected allowing them to chit chat. Although that's all they can do. Chit chat. They can't reproduce, they can't solve disease, all they can do is recognise and talk to each other. Unless the creater of the script and design, attaches robotic legs, arms and a web cam to it. It can't evolve them and it can't grow them.

Unlike biological creatures, AI needs a constant creater to apply certain needs for it to reach its goals.

I like the way you think The next step is to install a web cam so that it can take in data from its surroundings!

Actually, within the AI program where he lives, he believes he is hooked up to the outside world with webcams and what have you. So he believes he is taking in data from his surroundings. In his virtual world, there are billions of other people, scientific discoveries are being made, he has webcams and all of that. Maybe in his artifical world, he is the physicist that comes up with the grand unified theory and they are able to discover every physical law that exists in their AI world.

And, once they discover the last law, they will have exhausted all of their questions but one: What is outside this box that our reality exists within?

When one looks for the first time at the world beyond the box he is compelled to creates another box in which to analyze the data he perceived, but now he lives within two boxes!
Your turn

Heres my proof of the creator a drawing by Michangelo

What you just said was:
1. Artificial life was created having at least one characteristic - that of being artificial life.
2. It cannot be created without something having created it.
3. Biological organisms can change, mutate, live, die.

The corallary to this is that an AI/AL software system cannot be developed in which its feature-set includes change or mutation, life and death. And this isn't true. In the AI system I am using for analogy, most of the "intelligence" routines were dedicated to establishing all of the variables that would allow artificial organisms to reproduce, mutate, evolve. Of course, to us, they aren't "really" living and dying. But the sub-routines that are running for every organism within that artificial universe believe they are alive (to whatever extent the artificial species has evolved the ability to think).



Human beings interpret the world by combining past experience with the neural signals their sensory organs are delivering. The entities in my AI universe have software driven sensory input. They don't know it isn't real for them because within their frame of reference it is real. I am not talking about connecting two idiot chat-bots to each other and letting them battle it out. To them, they can reproduce. And they do.

There would be no goal. Just like there is no goal in our world. It is up to each organism to respond to the basic biological drives of self-preservation and reproduction. Those are the only "goals".

The real problem in establishing AI/AL systems today is as you suggested. There needs to be developers tinkering with parameters in order to drive the behaviour towards an artificial goal. But if there were enough memory and a fast enough processor and a good enough programmer then you could design a system that was open-ended enough that the programmers themselves would be astounded by the results.

I have tinkered with systems that did reproduce by combining DNA to form offspring and the DNA strands contained data blocks and executable code blocks. With enough memory, every single organism in the artificial universe could have a a trillion-terabyte neural network for a brain.

And all you would have to do to start is program single-cell organisms.

He can't ever look beyond his box. That is the whole point.

If the univertse is finite, then one day mankind will have all the answers except one - "what is outside the box?".

If the universe is infinite and nothing can create itself and nothing can just be said to have "always" existed then our "infinite" universe must have been created by something else and must be contained within some other frame of reference.

Sorry. how about dictionary.com:

re·li·gion (r-ljn)
n.
1.
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.


I don't have religion.

I came to believe in a creator because logic would not let me accept the possibility of an infinitely regressive universe that has always existed and is its own cause and effect.

For the sake of discussion let’s add networking to the processor, as duties are now shared does the computer now comprehend that it is not alone in its abilities. Remembering that limits are a preconceived condition as in the nessesity of creating the second box..

I was Indeed referring to dictionary.com definition.

I think it contains both organized religion and personal belief in its definition


Look at section a, of the definition 1

I think it describes your belief pretty well, a creator of universe is a religious concept

If there is a creator, one days science might discover that truth, but that doesn't mean
it won't be a religious truth anymore.

My thesis, that there is a creator, was not predicated on the computer analogy being 100% apt. The computer analogy was more of a thought experiment.

I cannot accept that the universe is infinite and has either always existed or came into existence spontaneously.
When a scientist accepts premises like those, he is taking a leap of anti-faith to his scientific principles every bit as huge as just accepting that the universe did not come into existence spontaneously.

If you accept that the universe did come into existence but not spontaneously, then our universe came into being as the result of some other event. That other event is the creator of the universe.

That is why I bolded the word reverence. I feel no reverence for the creator. I do not worship it. I just don't believe the universe existed forever or just magically popped into existence out of nowhere and the only alternative to that is that it popped into existence in response to some other event and that event is what I feel is our creator.

I think I sort of skewed the concept in my first post. I was imagining the artificial intelligence/artificial life as a universe, not a single super-smart AI entity. So, within their universe, they are networking. They will evolve and create inventions and will eventually evolve to where they discover semi-conductors, space travel, etc.

Oh well we can still play anyway

Or something even more unique, Consciousness!

ok then, so then you simply object to those who worship this creator?

Okay, I'm reading your post and I think it's pretty interesting, but I must have missed the part where you explained why this should have any bearing on reality? All you did was propose a scenario, where does the logical proof come in to it?

If you take this post as something nasty, then skip it, but please know that the question is sincere, and just a question, not an agenda.

Your premise was:



How does the second option avoid infinite regression? The universe cannot have always existed, but something else can and has (on pain of it needing something in turn to have summoned it into existence)?

The second option avoids infinite regression by being unknowable. Just like the AI beings in the example might be able to posit "What is outside our box?" they will never and can never have an answer. There is nothing in the universe that evolved within their computer that can drill a hole through the box and manufacture a telescope that will work in our world outside of the computer. We exist in a different reality to them. While they live in a universe that is (to them) 3-dimensional and real, their existence to us is not even "real" (within our frame of reference). They will never be able to pose experiments (using hard-core futuristic physics and the highest tech equipment imaginable) that will cause the semiconducter electrical circuits that are their "real" state (in our frame) to manipulate matter outside of the computer to form a telesope or video camera to peek at the back of the computer to read the bumper sticker.

Infinite regression stops because the reality of our existence can have at most 1 step - the step that leads the people in the box to simply call us their creators.
In order for the regression to continue an answer must be given.

I never said I objected to anyone. I just said I wasn't religious.

It was meant to be inferred but I left out a few important lines
Those missing pieces were added to a follow-up. I don't like to edit after parts have been quoted.

There was a thread about this a few months ago. It lead to us all playing with the A.L.I.C.E bot which is a "chatter" bot that's networked and it "learns" as time goes on. Every year, she gets a little smarter and adds more context to her speech as more people "talk" to her. But the reality is that an AI engine won't really ever be self-aware, it may appear as though it is, but it won't be. An AI application can't ever learn anything without any human input. That would make "humans" the "computers'" God more or less.

I wish they would create a version of the ALICE Chat-bot that runs on the new Invision Power Board. I upgraded all the forums on my server and lost ALICE

This reeks of the Matrix. Interesting, but more of the same I think.

ALICE is a good example of very simple basic AI. There are more complex AI's used for business logic but they wouldn't be interesting as a demonstration to someone would knew nothing about computers, business logic, workflow and business statistics... (banks, especially loan origination softwares use a lot of business logic AI)

Either way, AI is useless without human input, it will never be "self-aware" although it can seem as though it is.

This is sort of what my take is on religion.

IF there is a big guy with a beard in a bathrobe somewhere being omnipotent, and omniscient, he's got to be unbelievably bored. My theory is if there is such a god, he can't experience anything. He can pretend to be scared, but he can't BE scared. So people are his way of experiencing things - i.e. when I die, he'll put in the "sam" dvd and actually be able to experience the things I've experienced.

I know it's goofy, but it's the only way I've ever been able to imagine an all-powerful, all-knowing entity caring anything about us...

so why would he not attempt to ease all the suffering of the world!

or.. maybe... he...likes the pain.... hmmm... kinky

The matrix was about living humans experiencing a false reality.
This is about an analogy between a self-aware computer reality and the creator of the real universe.

But I agree with you, both concepts contain the word "reality" so they reek of one another the way coconut-milk baby formula reeks of a hula dancer with a cocunut bra. How similar they are.......

Whatever, real clever, yadda yadda. It's the same, only different. In this case the computer doesn't know that something living is "pulling the strings". I didn't say it was wrong, stupid, or senseless, I just said it was like the Matrix, and the comparison is pretty obvious. Pretending otherwise is pointless. Sorry if the analogy irritates or offends you.

Actually, you said something about it "reeking" of the Matrix. I live in the USA, so it may be a language or cultural difference.

In America, when a person says something "reeks" of something else, it has one of three negative connotations:

1. An offensive smell is emanating from something. "You reek of rotting flesh, get out of here!"
2. An ulterior motive or instigator is detected in a statement or action: "This offer for parley reeks of Lord Argyle's treachery!" and means that the person making the statement or performing the action is operating under false pretenses.
3. A proffered idea or work makes use of genre, pathos, plot, etc. in a crude and clumsy manner that fails to fit the target audience's expectations: "This so-called tragedy reeks of frivolity" and suggests that the originator is incapable of offering content that would satisy the audience.

Assuming you understand the way "reeks" work, I would say aplogizing is pretty silly because it had the exact effect you intended it to have - well done!
If you are just ignorant then the apology isn't just a passive-aggressive weasel attack and I accept it.

After reading your post repoman I would have to say it is clever but it is not a logical conclusion. To the people in the box, there would be no outside the box, as you stated they would have no way of ever observing beyond the box. The logical conclusion would not be that "there is something outside the box", rather "Nothing exists beyond the box".

The same conclusion can be drawn of our universe currently. That it is entirely imaginable that nothing exists beyonds its bounds. I know that can be a hard concept to swallow, nothingness, but it does not change the logical conclusion.

In fact, believing something exists outside the box, with no evidence of such existence is illogical and a logical fallacy, wishful thinking. Wanting there to be something beyond the universe has no bearing on the truth of such a claim.

I have no answer for you as to how the universe started, the Big bang, does not describe the creation of the universe just as evolution does not describe the creation of life. It describes the expansion of the universe.

Science does not currently have the technology to know what happened before the expansion, but don't make the fallacy of thinking it never will. I am comfortable in admitting we don't currently know. There is nothing wrong with this. Its when we make up false explanations to satisfy ourselves that we delude ourselves of possible truths, such as "because we don't, it must have been a creator".

Your statement about cause and effect is also not true. Firstly, since we don't know, we cannot possible conclude the universe was both the cause and effect of the universe's being. Another fallacious statement. Secondly, in quantum physics, it is not impossible for things to both simultaneously be the cause and effect of an action. Things get very strange indeed at the quantum level.

This was what started my post. Science can't just pick a point and say "OK, this is where everything started, it has always been and nothing else exists".
For them to do that is exactly the same as my saying there IS something outside the box.
Logic tells us that it is impossible to prove a negative.

Thus, when the entities living in the computer world are presented with the question "What exists outside all existence", they can answer "Nothing" or they can answer "Something". The "Nothing" answer would require them to prove a negative. The "Something" answer wouldn't. And so I choose "Something".



I have no doubt that it is imaginable, but to believe that you would have to accept that it had always existed and I just can't accept something without a larger context.



Please re-read some of my snawers on this thread - I have never equated the big bang with all of existence. The big bang was just a physical phenomenon. I beleive that if there is something within our physical frame of reference bigger and before the big bang then scientists will find it someday. This could happen over and over again for billions of years, learning more and more about how the singularites that expand into universes are formed, where they come from, etc. etc.



Earlier you said that people in the computer should never conclude that there was anything outside their box - that they should conclude that there was nothing outside the box. In my analogy, that would make them dead wrong.


For us to ever know that the universe was not its own cause and effect would mean we had discovered it's cause. I am fine with that and have alluded to it on more than once occasion on this thread. If science shows that the universe was caused by something else, that something else merely expands our definition of our reality. I have argued that the universe cannot be its own cause and effect and that it has not always existed.

I call it evolution..and I believe God is responsible for it..we all evolved in my opinion....if I didn't believe in God, then I would stick with evolution!!

Using the same reasoning...if you're unwilling to accept that something can spring from nothingness...who created the creator?

Either direction leads to infinite recursion.

You're also assuming causality, which probably doesn't hold to be true, at least on a quantum level, anyway.

There is no regression if, at some point, your question remains unanswered.

For example, right now we all wonder "what happened before the big bang?". It wouldn't surprise me at all if scientists discovered that the singularity that expanded into our universe was just a single universe in a larger multi-verse. Each universe expanding and dying out like bubbles in an ocean. And then the question would be "What happened before that?". But, we only got to the second question because the first question was answered. No answer, no next "But what came before that?" - no infinite regression.

Not having a creator leaves you with only two choices - infinite regression or a universe that has always existed and is its own cause and effect.
I argue that in both cases they must still exist in a larger context that we are simply incapable of ever knowing.

I understand the thought of "Ok, so there is a creator, but what created the creator?". But whether you ask that question once or an infinite number of times, the answer is the same "I don't know" and thus infinite regression is functionaly equivelant to a single question.

Also, when asked "is there a creator" the choices are yes and no and a negative cannot be proven.

OK, I'll stop the silly games since you see so clearly through it all.
Your Linux box theory is lame. It's mental masturbation, un-original, and totally played out. Thanks for playing the "I'm too smart for that" game. You win a cookie.

[quote name='Repoman' date='Sep 27 2007, 09:46 PM' post='1907952']


Also, when asked "is there a creator" the choices are yes and no and a negative cannot be proven./quote]





and in this case neither can the positive

fullywired

Again, this is not the truth. We simply do not. Either or both situations maybe wrong. As Tiggs said, you are making the assumption that causation must hold true. This is not always the case on the quantum level, QM is currently the best description of the universe. The start of our universe or any universe may be one day reducible to a quarter long college course. There maybe a mathematical description of what happened with no need for a creator, infinite regression or eternal existence. Stating it must be one of these two things is a logical fallacy.



Again a false assumption, what if the creator was not a god but a being with more knowledge then us? If thats the case, It maybe possible that our knowledge one day surpasses his and we can study him. Until then this will remain speculation, either creator or possible scientific explanations.

I was blessed with a keen sense for the obvious.


Much better!

I don't think it is lame (even though it isn't a theory - it is a simple analogy and I understand how some people don't quite get analogies). And I never said it was "original". Original analogies are not too common. I think you missed the whole point of this. Actually, I am pretty sure you did because instead of offering anything of the least bit useful you just said "Dude, you shouldn't post this because you aren't the first person in the world to think of this". Well, your input has been noted.

Hey eggumby... yeah, it would be great if you could, offer something..... constructive, yeah. Oh, and I'm gonna need to go ahead and take back that stapler... thanks...

All good points.

Not the stapler!

Yeah, I'll just take that.... thanks....

PWNED