III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

[Flann 5]

It's nice to know an algorithm contained the "recipe"for our eventual existence.

It's interesting that Carrier and Dawkins have this fixation with simplicity and both think the multiverse is a paragon of simplicity.
Here's Berlinski's acerbic summary in relation to Dawkin's on this.

"But having swallowed the Landscape (multiverse) with inimitable gusto, Dawkins is surely obliged to explain just why he scruples at the Deity.After all the theologian need only appeal to a single God lording over it all and a single universe-our own.
Dawkins must appeal to infinitely many universes crammed into creation,with laws of nature wriggling indiscreetly and fundamental physical parameters changing as one travels from one corner of the cosmos to the next,the whole entire gargantuan structure scientifically unobservable and devoid of any connection to experience.
This is a point that Dawkins endeavours to meet,but with markedly insufficient success. "The key difference between the radically extravagant God hypothesis," he writes and the apparently extravagant multiverse hypothesis,is one of statistical improbability."
It is? I had no idea,the more so since Dawkin's very next sentence would seem to undercut the sentence he has just written. "The multiverse for all that it is extravagant,is simple,"because each of it's constituent universes "is simple in it's fundamental laws."
If this is true of each of these constituent universes,then it is true for our universe as well. And if our universe is simple in it's fundamental laws,what on earth is the relevance of Dawkin's argument?
Simple things,simple explanations,simple laws,a simple God.
Bon appetit.

[ant]

The observer does not determine anything about the particle's position or momentum. Instead in order to really pin point the position you have to interact with it strongly thus sending it off to who knows where with a strong reaction, or you can get a good idea of the momentum by interacting very lightly so that you don't actually pin point it at any time, but get instead a sort of average of it's location which is uncertain, but a much better trajectory of the momentum.

This is a fine example of how people misunderstand and overstate what experiments actually are telling us.

But here, let's look at this: (emphasis mine)

Steinberg stresses that his group's work does not challenge the uncertainty principle, pointing out that the results could, in principle, be predicted with standard quantum mechanics. But, he says, "it is not necessary to interpret the uncertainty principle as rigidly as we are often taught to do", arguing that other interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the pilot-wave theory, might "help us to think in new ways".

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110602/ ... 1.344.html

Easing the way a particle is measured leads to a better chance at an accuracy of measurement.
This is different - MUCH DIFFERENT - than saying a conscious observer need not be present or interact in any way.

The quantum state just has to interact with another quantum state and become entangled.

The interaction is caused by a conscious measurement of a particle.

Instead in order to really pin point the position you have to interact with it strongly thus sending it off to who knows where with a strong reaction, or you can get a good idea of the momentum by interacting very lightly

Uh, freaking DUH!!! the soft or strong interaction is the interaction caused by CONSCIOUSNESS!!

New interpretations of QM help us to conceptualize the interaction between consciousness and its effects on quantum states.
It's not a grand leap to a conclusion that consciousness is NOT NEEDED.

Once again we have a brilliant layman explaining it to us in error.

[ant]

Sean Carroll speaks on this topic.

while we are at it, can you tell us if Sean's "consciousness is not needed" hypothesis has been peer reviewed and published?

Thanks

[ant]

Sean said in his video that the universe splits in different directions at a given time (I'm guessing he means regardless if consciousness exists or not)

Can you provide evidence for that claim, Johnson?
What peer reviewed study actually has evidenced a quantum mechanical environment splitting/collapsing without consciousness as an observer?

[Flann 5]

Hi Johnson,
Here's what looks like a problem for neo-darwinism. How would you explain this arthropod fossil found in the Cambrian strata?

It had a heart with a sophisticated circulatory system and a brain.
How did this evolve so quickly and early?
http://www.livescience.com/44654-first- ... ropod.html

[johnson1010]

Flann

I read the article you linked. What was the problem with the fossil?
The fact that it existed in such old rock strata? There are lots of fossils of similar type in that age of rock strata.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion

The fossil in the link is from about 520 million years ago, when the start of the Cambrian period was 20 million years before that, and there were fossils going as far back as 3.48 billion years (all the way back to single celled micro-fossils).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_fos ... rous_sites

Extinct animals were very complex. It is easy to fall into the mistake of thinking that these species died out because they were inferior. All evidence suggests, however, that pterodactyls were far better fliers than modern birds. That many dinosaurs would easily out-compete the modern animals which fill their niches. And it is no surprise that these ancient animals all the way back to the Cambrian period would have had circulatory, and nervous systems.

These are diagnostic traits of cladistics that precede the division of the largest animal classifications. Nerves came before legs, in other words. And it is evidence of this type that informs us that we are related to arthropods, and at what point our lineages diverged. By determining which diagnostic traits we share with these animals, and which we do not, we see where the branches in our family tree were formed.



Ant,

Ant:
Once again we have a brilliant layman explaining it to us in error.

My explanation was a summary of the four videos i posted produced by professional physicists, one of which a prominent quantum mechanics theoretician....


Ant... Remember we had this conversation before? I have a poor understanding of quantum mechanics now? Next to Sean Carroll, Gell Mann, or Moriarty certainly that is true. But based on your ludicrous statements on these forums i can guarantee you understand far less than I. You haven't been right about anything so far, so why should this be any different?

You have only ever demonstrated a deep disconnect with the facts of any topic you discuss so in this case i certainly consider the source of my detractions.

It's amusing that you are always demanding scientific papers generated to combat your every lunatic fantasy.

"OH! You say that bricks AREN'T conscious!!!! Do you have any EVIDENCE to that, JOHNSON! Can you refer me to the department of "Bricks don't have consciousness" at MIT!?!?!? Well if not, then i am right by default and bricks are conscious."

While you demand scientifically peer reviewed papers on every topic of discussion, we still for some reason can't get you to address the simple resolutions of your own statements on these forums. Like whether or not you believe that the supernatural entity, Odin, really exists.

"It is extremely stupid for any disbeliever to say he doesn't believe a supernatural entity exists."

[Interbane]

That life has in fact emerged and evolved from simple to complex seems to be an article of faith for neo-Darwinists.

It's the opposite of faith. It's a fact, where a tremendous amount of evidence from many disparate lines of inquiry converge onto a single conclusion. Even as a layman, I can list a half dozen of the fields whose work converges on this conclusion. It's highly improbable that each and every line of inquiry is wrong in the same exact way.

The Cambrian explosion doesn't fit with this model of slow gradual change and there are plenty of problems with the theory.Evolution does take place, but the theory seems a huge extrapolation from what change can be verified, which is not a great deal,I think.

The cambrian explosion fits within the model. You're still using age old arguments from creationist websites Flann. The change that is verified is verified through multiple methods from different fields.

Simple things,simple explanations,simple laws,a simple God.

Good one Berlinski. So now an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent eternal creator of the universe is simple? Infinite in every way(including necessarily complexity), yet simple?

The concept of existence itself actually presupposes a mind capable of higher reasoning.

A concept is not a person, so it has no presuppositions. Did you mean that the concept of existence requires a person capable of higher reasoning? I agree, the abstraction of what it means to exist requires and information processor that can handle the abstraction. But the "instance" of existence, that things exist, does so without the abstraction. The concept is a human fabrication for the realness of the world we see around us.

Uh, freaking DUH!!! the soft or strong interaction is the interaction caused by CONSCIOUSNESS!!

Consciousness caused the interaction? Through what means? By sending electrical impulses to the man's muscles that control the instrument that sends the measurement particle into contact with the test particle? Sure. The test particle that we use as a cannon ball to measure the test particle is what is truly interacting, however. It is the endpoint on an obscure chain of causation from our consciousness, through our nerves, to our muscles, to our instrumentation, etc.

From reading what you write, it's almost as if you think there's a field to conciousness that interacts with particles, skipping the intervening causal chain. Or is that not your interpretation?

The particles we use do the interacting, and this is true whether or not their preceding causal chain contains a conscious observer. The interactions are no different than the quadrillion other particles that interact with each other, but for one exception. We know the position and velocity of the measuring particle well enough to infer velocity/position(but not both) of the test particle.

Johnson, this Deepak Choprism can be traced back to "What the Bleep do we know", a film that B. Perry and I watched a decade ago. It's based on a juvenile misunderstanding of quantum uncertainty.

The algorithm dun it

At a point halfway through his life, ant finally realizes that math is the grammar of the universe.

[ant]

You havent actually added anything of substance here.

And again, youve totally overstated this with an overzealous interpretation of what youve posted.

It's near pathetic now how you present certain explanations as definitive scientific conclusions.

You flood posts with links as if your google scholarship is the latest knowledge.
And youre condescending with your tone (its not magic)


This is why I have yet to see a new atheist as the life of any party.
They are by and large foolishly arrogant and patronizing

Consciousness has not been proven either unnecessary or irrelevant to wave collapse. That is not a determination of theoretical physics.
Different kinds of measurement that are not drastic still effect the wave function.
Its actually an apparatus as an observer and measurer that causes eventual collapse.

Can you provide evidence that different universal histories unfold without consciousness?
You are talking gibberish if you cant. Thats what that little empiricist devil on your shoulder would tell you.

The role of consciousness in determining reality has not been determined.
Anyone that says it has or implies that it is not needed for the unfolding of reality is overstating what theoretical physics has to say at this point.
Any idiot can google summaries of the latest theories.
Except of course if that idiot only focuses on what his biases are.

Congratulations.

[ant]

Deepak?

Whats this all about?
I am not endorsing anything deepak has said.

Youre be8ng condescending

If you dont stop you can go back to your echo chamber, bombastic moron.

[Flann 5]

Thanks Johnson,
I'll continue this on your evolution thread.
Hi Interbane,
Berlinski was tongue in cheek there in relation to the idea that the mutiverse is somehow a simpler explanation. The multiverse is fraught with problems and complications theoretically,apart from not actually existing, except in the imaginations of Carrier and Dawkins.
As Berlinski also says; I'll paraphrase; If mutiverse theorists stopped writing about it, like Atlantis, it would disappear.

You believe there are mutiple confirmations of neo Darwinism.There are multiple problems with it,not least how the mechanisms of mutations and natural selection could successfully evolve the genetic materials and life forms.