This is a follow up to my previous OP Is Cosmic Consciousness responsible for reality?
There seems to be some confusion regarding the causes of collapse of wave function(which seems to creates reality) whether a conscious observer can collapse the wave function ONLY or can a designed robot/computer perform the same role. Instead of pointing out the facts, I’d like “the seekers of truth” to do it for themselves. Since apparently ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’, I attach 2 videos that cover 2 breakthrough experiments in the understanding of well known double-slit experiment and the implications of collapse of wave function by an observer on the nature of reality…
Things to watch for in the second video: At 13 min and 15 min mark the experiment identifies the difference between robot/Linux systems and humans’ effect on the double-slit experiment. At 32 min mark we can see the implications of the experiments on reductive materialism and materialistic philosophy as well as why the obvious change is necessary that resisted by the scientific community…
Things to watch for in the first video: At 2:30 min mark it is explained what exactly causes the collapse of wave function. Does an act of observing alone cause the collapse of wave function? Or rather, does the knowledge of which path determined by a conscious observer or knower do that?
The last part of the second video talks about implications of the experiment that are so mind boggling that I’m going to leave them out for another OP. For those who have curious minds, please pay a close attention to “behavior” of 2 entangled particles which either involves their knowledge of the future or we fully do not understand the concept of time…
So selfishness. Perhaps evolution does explain morality then.
Maybe he can’t handle the truth.
In software engineering I would write a test. keiths, being the genius he is, doesn’t need to write tests. I guess some designers are better than others.
No. If we came to exist through a blind amoral process then we would expect the way we behave and the things we believe to reflect that process. So why blame anyone for anything. There is no OUGHT to be found.
Why don’t people just say that the other person is doing something that they don’t like and leave it at that? Instead it becomes about “the truth” and “the facts” and what people ought to do or ought not to do and these pages are full of such things. It’s like a religious web site for “skeptics.”
People act as if there is some objective perfect standard while at the same time denying it. At least you’re willing to say it’s just personal preference. What makes you feel good. It makes you feel pleasure, or pain, therefore it is to be embraced, or rejected.
I mean seriously, why should anyone ought not do the things that you dislike? Why are others obligated to you or what you desire in any way?
colewd,
So lets dumb it down further. Lets see at what point your mechanism works.
Try to evolve this paragraph into another coherent paragraph using random change and all the other tools (evolutionary like) mentioned in the paragraph.
You can add any tools you want except blind and unguided does not allow knowledge of the new paragraph.
Richard Dawkins used this type of analogy except he “cheated” with a target.
GlenDavidson,
Genes are completely dependent on other genes for their expression levels.
So we ought to behave the way you think we should?
True, except you are specifying what will be produced.
Hormones, metabolic products, small interfering RNAs, all factor into gene expression.
Not sure what you meant with your statement.
Glen Davidson
Oh, it’s the dreary fallback position of the theist, how can you mean anything with words like “truth” if they weren’t commanded from on high?
When you can’t make a case, just claim that “ought” and “truth” only have theistic meaning, therefore the opposition is negated and dehumanized in their minds. Obviously not a way to further discourse, but to declare “victory” on their terms, while ignoring what “they” say.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
If you study the cell cycle you will see that there are many transcriptional proteins. This is how the ubiquitin system controls gene expression by targeting for destruction excess genes in the nucleus. Transcription factors contain several compatible proteins and small molecules that trigger transcription.
newton,
I am asking for any coherent paragraph.
Please don’t forget as you build an animal any new protein will not work as they are interdependent.
If the alternate, a directed and moral process, is the reality should we expect the way we behave to be moral ? How does one account for amoral behavior in that scenario?
What are the specifications of coherent in your analogy?
Yes, I made it clear that I’m aware of genes affecting gene expression. (Of course ubiquitin is not targeting for destruction excess genes in the nucleus). This seems to suggest that only genes affect gene expression:
The trouble is that gene expression isn’t “completely dependent” on other genes for their expression levels, it’s due to any number of factors. Some gene expression is regulated by negative feedback, as in, an enzyme’s translation may be reduced as the dominant product of that enzyme becomes more common.
So, unless you’re simply wrong, I don’t see what you can mean by your statement, unless it’s something banal, like genes are always involved in some manner in levels of gene expression. True, but obvious.
Glen Davidson
There is no OUGHT to be found regardless of how we came to exist. Substitute God in for evolution and you still can’t get any OUGHTS out of it. Origins don’t get you oughts.
You can’t derive an ought from an is, no matter what that is, is.
A morally perfect being created us – therefore we ought to do X. Sorry, it doesn’t follow.
Please enlighten me how you think God having created us logically entails particular OUGHTS.
I already informed you that yes, it essentially reduces to our desires. There are certain things we want, and things we want to avoid. With that in mind, we can find what actions are conducive, what is more or less likely, to lead to those goals.
There is an objective standard, the standard we define. We point to some objective facts, like what we want to achieve and what we want to avoid, and then that is our standard by which we measure actions and behaviors.
Yes, what the hell else could ever matter? Why would anyone want to submit to God-given standards if they aren’t actually about us? In what way would those be better? That’s a serious question. Please explain to me why I should follow a theistic morality? What should motivate me to do so? What is the theistic moral system supposed to achieve? What is it’s ultimate purpose? Basically I want to you to answer the “and what is good about that?” question until you hit rock bottom. Please do that here in this thread, get down to your bedrock and tell me what it is. For me, it’s us humans and our mental states. Are we happy or sad, in pain or in pleasure? It can’t get any deeper than that for me. That is what morality has to reduce to. I don’t see what else there really is to care about.
Having asked theists about this before, an often given reason is eternal reward in heaven, or eternal punishment in hell. But that standard assumes human desires is the ultimate reason for engaging in certain behaviors: We want to achieve reward for selfish reasons, and want to avoid punishment for selfish reasons. Either way, the ultimate arbiter becomes human desires about wellbeing.
On the theistic moral system it still reduces to selfishness. You selfishly want to abide by God’s rules, why? Because if you do then good things will happen to you, and if you don’t then bad things will happen to you.
If you disagree here and claim the theistic moral system isn’t essentially about human wellbeing, then please explain to me what it is even about!
What use is it then? Why abide by “God’s nature” standard (or however you wish to define the standard)? What does it achieve to follow God’s nature? What is good about that? In what way does it make sense to say it is good if it isn’t, at bottom, good FOR US? What other kind of good is there that is worth caring about?
Have you ever even thought about this? I’d like to see you do what I did, tell me what reason there is to do things on your theistic moral system. Why ought we do X?
GlenDavidson,
This seems to imply that you can start transcription without a gene generated protein.
Is this what you are claiming?
newton,
Such that a reader can understand the writers message. Spelling grammar errors and missing words/letters are ok.
Read what I wrote, instead of trying to trap me in one of your ignorant little word games.
Glen Davidson
Absolutely. That would prove once and for all that you are all irrational.
GlenDavidson,
I have not reason to trap you. The facts will speak for themselves.
Just clarify for me what you think you understand about eukaryotic cells.
Your claim of feedback systems was correct and a more accurate description then my claim of reducing excess proteins in the nucleus although thats what the feedback system accomplishes.
Non regulated excess cell cycle proteins in the nucleus is a cause of cancer if those proteins initiate the cell cycle (when not required) or initiate vascular growth(when not required).
No, that is false, Glen. Untrue.
Again untrue. But then, you’re probably not reading the actual exchange. So we’ll just point out that you’re making an argument from ignorance and leave it at that.
You wrote “excess genes,” not “excess proteins.”
Maybe you meant “excess proteins,” but it wasn’t what you wrote.
Glen Davidson
The irony.
And do they ever.
There is no ought that can be derived from what you feel (what is).
Yet that is what you are doing. You don’t like it, therefore others ought not do it.
Do I need to quote you again?
Rumraket,
Great post, rum.
Rumraket, to Mung:
And as a follow-up question, why should God’s moral standards qualify as objective if a human’s are not?
GlenDavidson,
Yes, thanks for the correction.
I agree. I have not claimed that oughts can be derived from anything at all. I have told you why I have expectations of others, not that I claim to be able to derive oughts from any statement of fact.
But let’s be clear: Neither can you.
You ALSO can’t get to any oughts from anything in your theology.
Where? Show me where I derive or attempt to derive an ought from an is.
I have not engaged in that line of reasoning anywhere.
If there’s somewhere where I attempt to derive an ought from an is, yes I’d like to see a quote of me doing that.
In the mean time Mung, can you derive any oughts from your theistic worldview? If so then how? Show me!
What writer? What message?
And since we are on it, what reader? Because you are going to have a hard time finding anybody willing to run a simulation where millions of strings need to be appraised by hand.
Corneel,
You bring up a very interesting point here. If the target is not specific like in the Weasel program then an algorithmic search is much more difficult.
Since we want to loosen the requirements to make the functional space as large as possible and the search space as small possible, we can get rid of upper case letters and punctuation and then limit the paragraph to 4 words and have Corneel the sender.
simplified to: what writer what message
At this point I understand the message. How many changes before we don’t have workable english. How about adding French German and Italian as workable possibilities?
Oh good, for a moment I thought you were proposing an impossible task.
Let’s roll along. I don’t think it is wise to set a word limit, because without a word length limit, you will allow for an infinite set of strings. A few seconds googling gave me an average length of 8 or 9 characters for words in the English language, so let’s restrict the length of the string to 4 * 8 = 32 characters. There are 27 possible characters (including spaces) so that gives me a number of 27^32 = 6.4 * 10^45 possible strings.
Let me write that out:
6400000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 strings approximately
I suggest you make a list of all possible strings, and indicate for each one whether it is coherent or not. When you are finished, let us know, and I am sure someone is willing to help with the programming of the simulation.
Another factor to consider is that a sentence incoherent in english might actually be informative in another language. The “landscape” of functional language strings is potentially equal in size to the total size of the string landscape as we can in principle invent a language in which the string coherently conveys information.
In this sense what determines the “functionality” of a sentence is analogous in principle to how different environments determine the functionality of biopolymers. It is possible that there are a great number of environments that wound render biopolymers we think of as nonfunctional in ours, functional in those.
The P-loop kinase fold from ATP synthase/ATPase is known to have other functions besides ATP synthase. The sequence-conservation of the ATP synthase fold in ATP synthase proteins does not mean the protein sequence can’t change beyond the known variants of sequences of the ATP synthase proteins used in extant life. It means that among changes that go beyond the conserved ATP synthase sequences, there is a switch to other functions.
So as an example, just to explore this idea, we create a language with just two words in it, yes and no.
Then we generate strings, starting with one character strings, then two character strings, etc, and randomly assign each string the meaning of either “yes” or “no.”
In what sense would they convey information?
What you expect from others is what you think they ought to do.
If not what else can it be?
Your expectations are of what other ought or ought not do, and they are derived from facts. So you are doing exactly as I claimed. What are these “expectations” if not how others ought to behave?
So? Assuming that is true, how does that justify OMagain calling J-Mac a liar?
So you don’t see any reasoning here as to why others ought to do certain things and ought not do other certain things?
If someone intends to rob or kill someone you love, you wouldn’t go so far as to say they ought not do that based upon the reasons you’ve written above?
Hopefully you’re not referring to the parts where his argument is that theists are no better off than atheists. Because I don’t see how that helps his argument at all.
On a somewhat different matter, Gpuccio claims that ID is falsifiable. But it’s all false dilemma, ID makes a claim not based on evidence, then demands that its unverified claim be tested:
Yes, that’s what it states. What could justify such a claim?
No, you can illegitimately infer design. Merely decreeing that only design produces complex functional information does not a theory make.
How would you know, except by blank assertion, that it has no false positives?
Or in other words, your reasoning is circular.
Take any apparently evolved system, and cut out the unscientific “proved” requirement. Has any designed system ever been as slavishly derivative of previous generations as any form of life is? There it is, evidence of complex functional information being caused by processes other than design processes. Versus the fact that ID’s claims regarding complex functional information coming only from design have no evidence for them in the first place.
Only if you accept the falsification. But since its claims lack any reason for us to accept them in the first place, falsification per se isn’t actually required. It exists, anyway.
The only process that has been observed to normally produce the slavish derivation via inheritance that we see in life is evolution of the biologic kind.
IDists make up its “falsification test” by claiming, sans justification, that only design produces complex functional information, and, even when the evidence indicates that this is not the case, they refuse to accept the falsification.
But science really only requires testability for predictions that are entailed, anyhow. And there is no entailment from evidence or design (more properly, intelligence) itself that only design can produce complex functional information.
Glen Davidson
What scientific theory (hypothesis, etc.) claims that “only” one particular (kind of) cause can produce certain effects, anyway? How could anyone know so much as to say only one sort of cause can produce one type of effect? It’s entailment that matters, and neither design nor evolution actually entails the production of complex functional information, although evidence indicates that both produce it.
On the most general level, it’s the lack of entailment of complex functional information by ID or evolution that means that neither one can be properly tested by looking for CFI.
Glen Davidson
Just like a broken record, and a very, very bad record at that.
Corneel,
This is a simpler example to play with. I think there is certainly a chance that the sequence will break down with 8 random changes. It will almost always break down with 20 random changes.
Using Google as a test of word integrity and checking for other languages we can use 5 fair dice to roll first for change position and the second roll for the letter change. Any roll above the allotted number will be repeated until a roll inside the allotted numbers is obtained.
1=a
2=b
1=position 1
2=position 2
GlenDavidson,
Is the above CSFI? Looks like a test to me:-)
This is false.
No, it’s not. Obviously
Knock yourself out.
Just one thing that triggered a nasty suspicion: Precisely how were you planning to use those five (six-sided?) dice to specify a number between 1 and 27?
Well, it could be a test for CSFI.
That would show that something that produces CSFI was involved. Design, or something else. We can figure out what it was (species, at least), but not because of CSFI per se, which has not been shown to be diagnostic for the involvement of intelligence.
Glen Davidson
newton:
colewd:
In other words, the criteria need to be loosened so that at least some of Bill’s own prose will make it through the coherence check.
Corneel,
Very good catch. The dice have 2 problems first 1 would need to be offset and an additional dice added so 6 represents the letter A. The bigger problem is asymmetric probabilities of the numbers arising between 6 and 33.
The better tool is a roulette wheel.
How many mutations on average do you predict it will take for the words to become unrecognizable in the 3 languages discussed?