Michael Larkin
Member
Very laconic. You might well be right, but I'd appreciate some hint of why you think that.:)
Kent Forbes, Does the Simulation Hypothesis Defeat Materialism |323|
- Thread starter Alex
- Start date
Very laconic. You might well be right, but I'd appreciate some hint of why you think that.:)
Alex
Administrator
great. thx.To be frank, I haven't looked much into error correction coding in DNA, but there certainly exist DNA repair mechanisms to try to ensure that codon triplets, such as CAG, aren't corrupted during copying and/or transcription, say to CGG or GAG, which would lead to amino acid substitution, and hence mutation, in the protein being specified.
One could say that well before we get to consideration of error correction, we've already cast severe doubt on materialism. We can describe in purely materialistic terms the genetic code, but how in the heck did it come about? How did blind forces produce something that seems to rely on the abstract conception of a code? When we start asking questions like that, the only answers proffered by materialists are just-so hand-waving:
If, by some miracle, the genetic code did evolve without any conscious input, then how did error correction processes evolve? We'd need another miracle on top of that. Materialism is a belief in the power of undirected miracles.;)
Alex
Administrator
short answer -- it doesn't pass the sniff test when it comes to explaining the really hard stuff people encounter in the extended consciousness realms.
Gordon White does a beautiful job with this (albeit from a slightly different angle) in his new book:
https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Eight-Chaos-Essays-Enchantments-ebook/dp/B01J9REBIQ#navbar
Secondly ‘All is Mind’ also increases the risk of falling into an intellectually lazy Monism. The reality is Idealism is probably ‘true’ in some kind of super-metaphysical, 10,000 foot view of the cosmos and we and everything else are just eddies or oscillations in the one consciousness field. But this is sort of like saying the universe explains the universe, and the proposed unity of this consciousness field struggles to model lived personal experience on a daily basis. It is very useful when thinking about the entire universe or the individual human but it lacks the nuance required for a magical engagement with anything in between. The famous ‘nitrous oxide philosopher’, William James, wrote of the ‘indfferentism’ that accompanied his drug-induced feelings of universal unity.
Gordon White. Pieces Of Eight: Chaos Magic Essays and Enchantments (Kindle Locations 281-286).
Inner Space
New
Thanks for providing this interesting debate. I note that the whole subject of how consciousness relates to the simulation argument was pretty much ignored. Understandable given that all except one of the panel are physicists. Now for a more technical issue re: the simulation hypothesis and consciousness. All these physicists - I assume - are taking a materialist approach that goes something like this: the universe is and consists of a finite states of matter in space and time. The holographic bound essentially provides the limit in terms of how many physical or information states the universe can be in. A subset of the universes states consist of states of physical systems that we can define as intelligent. These intelligent systems are biological systems which have complex nervous systems and hence have consciousness - they integrate energy states in some unique way. Therefore, all mental states are just a sub-set of physical states in the universe and are the physical/mental sub-sets that belong to physical things wich integrate information. Idealists, such as the philosopher Liebniz argued that fundamentally we don't have a physical universe but instead minds or Monads are what is ontologically fundamental. The physical universe in space-time is built out of the fundamental perceptions of these interacting Monads. For the Idealist, the physical universe we see around us is a sub-set of the Monadic universe which is purely mental or purely mental states. This means that our physical universe could be nothing but a dream in the mind of a greater Monad. Whether we see ourselves as physical things simulated by a smarter physical thing (on their computer???) or as mental things that can simulate a physical world gives us very different understandings of the simulation hypothesis. Personally, I find the Idealist interpretation more coherent then the materialist. If Neil de Grasse Tyson's view that there are more "evolved" consciousness that can bring us into existent through simulation the notion that they "dream" us into existent - though weird - is more understandable (to me) then the notion that someone has simulated our existence on something like super-powerful computer. Especially as I currently take those things simulated on an everyday computer as not having consciousness. However, the status of some "things" or persons, "entities" I encounter in my dreams I'm not so sure about.
Kamarling
Member
One of those times when I understand all the words but the meaning of the whole escapes me.
Alex
Administrator
agreed :)
Alex
Administrator
more of a problem with my quote... Gordon does a great job of explaining in the book.
David Bailey
Member
Right - this expresses my feeling exactly - Idealism may be the ultimate theory, but you can't do anything with it because it is too permissive and abstract. I think philosophers took a wrong turn by accepting the observation that Dualism is ultimately inconsistent (two realms can be completely separate and yet interact) as reason to abandon Dualism.
My point is that lots of theories in science are ultimately inconsistent - the most famous one is belief in QM and GR - yet physicists continue to use both - hoping one day that this situation can be rationalised.
I think Dualism would be a useful temporary theory to help organise a lot of the phenomena that we discuss here. As it is we have Idealism which is too abstract, or Materialism that throws out a lot of the interesting evidence.
David
Michael Larkin
Member
Thanks for the response.
I've already said you might be right because I'm not that sure that what I was trying to express held much merit. And you still might be right, but like Kamarling, I haven't the faintest idea what the quote you provided actually means, although I do understand all the words. It comes from a book on Chaos Magic, I see, and for the moment. I've downloaded the sampler to see if I can make head or tail of White's writing.
I do bristle a bit at the phrase "intellectually lazy monism", I must confess. Hopefully I'll be able to grasp enough from the sampler to judge whether or not he's on to something: if he is, I might download the whole thing and get myself better educated. I might make further comment as and when I've read the sampler.
Kevin Williams
New
No, I think you hit the nail right on the head. Also, the problem lies when philosophers such as Ellerman try to steer QM away from sound mathematics into the realm of philosophy.
Hurmanetar
New
The quote rings true to me and I really like how White phrases things. I think what he's saying is that we kind of play word games with ourselves redrawing the boundaries and redefining terms, and this process might give us a temporary sense of intellectual accomplishment and expanded consciousness, but we're still left with a reduced simplified model of reality that is merely described with a different set of terms that are ultimately undefinable. The materialists say, "it's all material." What's material? "It is what it is." And the idealists say, "It's all mind." And what is mind? "It is what it is." At some point words are just words and fail to bring us any closer to the literal truth of existence. We have to take them as metaphors and accept the feelings they elicit as the next step towards truth beyond words. At some point someone will come along with more data that will take these feelings about reality and add a layer of logical functionality to support those feelings, but even that extra layer of verbal understanding cannot take us all the way there to a full understanding.
David Bailey
Member
Let me put it my way - Idealism (which is a monism) permits absolutely everything. I mean, a mind might decide that on Oct 1 absolutely everyone on the earth gets to eat an ice cream! Simply believing in Idealism is something of a cop-out because you don't have to fit any data to it - everything fits!
This is why I keep on saying that Idealism may be the ultimate theory, but it makes a rotten provisional theory! Think for a moment of Galileo's observations of the acceleration of an object under gravity. These represented a huge step forward, but they were technically wrong - because gravity varies in strength as you move further and further from the earth!
We need simplified ideas like Dualism to make progress to more comprehensive ideas.
David
Alex
Administrator
I agree. Seems like we can follow the data up to the launching of point, but should probably resist going further.
The data I see seems to indicate that NDEs are real... same re alien contact... remote viewing... after death communication. But I don't understand the nature/structure/purpose of those extended realms of reality/consciousness... at least from where I sit... and while LSD/DMT/XYZ might provide brief excursions I will always return to my dummy/limited self.
B
Baccarat
This hit me well, Bingo! The play of words is big and when I have discussions with my friends, I can't describe it like you do for fear of being cut off and putting my thoughts together
Psiclops
Member
The exact quote from Cox as I remember taking it down from the recorded show was:
In the celebrity Night with the Stars show, Cox outlines Quantum Theory by telling us that things can be in an infinite number of places at once and "describes the world with higher precision than the laws of physics laid down by Newton."
But he adds: " It doesn't therefore allow mystical healing or ESP or any other manifestation of new-age woo woo into the pantheon of the possible. Always remember quantum theory is physics and physics is usually done by people without star signs tattooed on their bottoms."
I quoted this in a forum discussion here:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2108&f=4
(I am skysurfer in that debate)
B
Baccarat
I was a member of this website a few years ago, I remember Craig Browning, I rarely posted, wonder if I could still log in with my e-mail and change the password? The site needs an update....do people still post on it?
B
Baccarat
If I remember Craig he was a mentalist who believed in the "paranormal"?
Psiclops
Member
The site still seems active. I've just logged in with the old handle and password.
Last time I was there was November 2012!
Michael Larkin
Member
I'll answer this and respond to Alex at the same time. Having now read the Gordon White sampler and listened to a couple of interviews of him, my take is that his approach and mine are similar at least in that we're both looking for explanations of reality. He's into magic and the spirit world, and I'm into Idealism. Is he right? Am I? Or are we both equally right (or wrong)? I have no clue. All I can say is that Idealism seems, for me, to be the best explanation of the world, and what I'm striving to do is to reconcile its apparent concreteness with the fundamental primacy of consciousness.
Your example of mind deciding that everyone will get an ice cream on 1 Oct. is exactly the opposite of how I envisage MAL, which isn't at all Abrahamic (as I think is implied by your example). MAL doesn't sit there and make things happen. Rather, it actively engages with the world -- with us and through us in a participatory fashion -- in a sense knowing no more than the sum total of what we know about what's going to happen.
On the one hand, we've got what we experience, which our senses seem to be telling us is concrete. Materialists stop there, and that raises issues like the hard problem of consciousness, which they either dismiss or say will be eventually understood under their paradigm. On the other hand, we've got people like me who don't accept this, so that the only options left seem to be some form of Dualism, or Idealism. You may be happy with Dualism as a half-way house, but I'm not. It seems like the kind of cop-out you're claiming applies to Idealism.
I'm afraid it looks like our points of view are irreconcilable. I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong, only that I'm attempting to grope towards an explanation from my perspective as someone inclined towards Idealism.
Arouet
Member
I used to post there too. I think I joined right after a bunch of regs left. Haven't posted there in ages.