http://mashable.com/2016/06/02/elon-musk-simulated-reality/#sdLXHm2_jsqB
2,657 thoughts on “Elon Musk Thinks Evolution is Bullshit.”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
KN:
Why do you think that skepticism is a “dilemma” we need to be “saved” from?
To be a Cartesian skeptic is simply to acknowledge that we don’t know (in the unasterisked sense) things about the external world, because sensory information can’t be fully trusted and is potentially subject to manipulation.
We may not know those things but we still know* them. For purposes of navigating our lives, know*ing is just as good as knowing, and it has the added advantage of being honest. Why claim to know things if we really only know* them?
We know things unless we don’t!
Btw, maybe we’re also being deceived about the *asterisked claims and don’t ‘really know’ those either!
Bruce,
I think the disjunction is neither wrong nor redundant. My point is simply that if you’re trying to rule out a disjunction, an inability to rule out even one of the terms is sufficient to scuttle the entire effort.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at here. Who are the subjects, and what is each of them saying?
Because I don’t see a practical difference between “know” and “know*”. The infinite disjunction of skeptical qualifiers does not do any important work.
KN,
Do you acknowledge the difference, even if you think it doesn’t have “practical” consequences? Are your philosophical interests limited to things that have practical consequences?
I think the question of whether we can know things about the real world is an important one, and that the disjunction of skeptical qualifiers is therefore doing important work.
walto, to Bruce:
Let’s call that hypothesis (a). In the same perceptual state, we also have evidence in support of the following hypotheses:
b) we’re in a simulation in which there is a “tree” “in front of” us;
c) we’re brains-in-vats being fed with “sensory” data that creates the impression of a tree in front of us;
d) a Cartesian demon is duping us into thinking there’s a tree in front of us;
etc.
If all of those hypotheses are coherent and fit the evidence, on what basis can you claim to know that (a) is true and that the rest aren’t?
I used to think that while we couldn’t rule out the others, we could at least settle on (a) as the most (subjectively) probable hypothesis by applying Occam’s Razor judiciously. I no longer believe that, and in any case the fact of a higher subjective probability, though necessary, is insufficient to justify a knowledge claim.
fifth:
I think it’s funny that God mooned Moses, but that hardly means that I don’t “have the chops” to understand the passage, which is quite clear:
You, meanwhile, have a big problem. You’ll need all the chops you can muster. Read on.
This an important point. One either has to rely on our perceptions or rely on God there are no other options.
All of science and wisdom and even everyday experience is driving us irreparably toward the conclusion that our perceptions are not reliable.
The sisyphean task of the God denier is to forever try and ignore that deduction.
peace
I think the Cartesian skeptic would say that we can never tell when our sensory information can be trusted at all. That’s vastly different from the more modest situation that we can usually tell whether our sensory information can be trusted and when it can’t be.
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
Not at all. You wholeheartedly agreed last year that it was Jesus’s physical butt that Moses saw.
Yet you just told us yesterday that
Which is it? Did Moses see Jesus’s physical body, or was it a mere adumbration?
You’re in a tough spot, fifth. You’ve claimed that it was the physical Jesus who showed himself to Moses. You need to make that claim, because you’ve also stated that only an incarnate Christ, operating within time, could interact with human beings.
But if the incarnate Christ — Jesus — was interacting with Moses within time, as you require, then he had already incarnated, within time.
So either…
1) there was more than one incarnation, which is a heretical view; or
2) there was only one incarnation, but it happened long before Mary became pregnant, which is also a heretical view; or
3) God can interact with the physical world without incarnating, in which case your entire justification for your presuppositionalism — the necessity of an incarnate God as a precondition for knowledge — is bogus.
Which will you do? Embrace a heresy, pull the rug out from under your presuppositionalism, or punt?
You’re screwed, fifth.
Patrick’s assessment was pretty apt:
fifth:
Patrick:
He’s right.
I acknowledge the conceptual differences, but I think that differences with practical consequences are more important for philosophers than differences without.
Now the position looks like, “we can know things about the real world, unless {A, B, C, D . . . }, where none of the items in that set can be ruled out on a priori grounds”
I can agree with that, of course. I just don’t see the point of insisting on it.
KN:
I agree. If there were ever an instance in which we could truly determine that our sensory information was trustworthy, that would be an instance in which we could know — with no asterisk — something about the external world.
By the way, I notice that you referred to “sensory information” there, yet you previously wrote:
Are you drawing a distinction between “sense data” and “sensory information”, and if so, what is it?
Also, I’m still curious about why you think skepticism is a “dilemma” we need to be “saved” from.
Who said anything about a “mere” adumbration the appearance to Moses was of vital importance in the history of the universe.
Why can’t an adumbration be a physical thing? An adumbration of a physical event like the incarnation will be physical by definition.
I stand by that.
You must be in time (in some sense) to communicate with creatures in time. It’s self evident
How about none of the above.
Have you heard of relativity? One of it’s tenants is that there is no privileged frame of reference when it comes to time.
It depends on your perspective.
You are for assuming a naive understanding of time that is simply not tenable when disusing events of cosmic import.
Instead of giving this the sort of thought it deserves you are fixated on butts and moonings.
That is why it’s difficult to take your ramblings seriously.
peace
It’s important to understand that this is an undefined and possibly infinite set.
If the Christian God does not exist there is an ever-increasing number of reasons to doubt cognitive contact with objective reality.
That is simply the lot a fallible being is in when he decides to make himself out to be god. Rebels have been discovering this since Eden.
peace
KN,
Sure, but my question was whether your philosophical interests are limited to things that have practical consequences. Mine aren’t, just as my scientific interests aren’t.
The bolded qualifier isn’t necessary.
It depends on whether you think this question is important: “Can we know anything about the real world, and if so, how is that possible?”
I think it’s an important question, and it’s hard to imagine that you, as a philosopher, don’t.
fifth:
You’re as bad at physics as you are at apologetics. Would you care to explain how Jesus incarnated at the time of Mary, then physically traveled back in time in order to create the world, talk to Adam and Eve, moon Moses, etc.?
I’ve given it plenty of thought, and I now have you trapped between a rock and a hard place. You’re reduced to arguing that the physical Jesus must have traveled backward within time in order to create and futz with the Old Testament world.
Show us the math, Einstein.
Try bouncing that crap off an actual physicist in the context of traveling back in time. You won’t like what you get back.
keiths,
All the evidence for a – e is evidence that there’s a tree in froont of you. Sure it’s evidence that either thereaks a trr in front of you or yoou’re a martian hyena, but that’s only because it’s evidence that there’s a tree in front of you. There’s no ev idence for anything else and no countervailing evidence. Just worries, So breathe.
I do think it’s an important question. I differ from you in thinking that we don’t need to attend to skeptical worries in order to answer it. I think that our knowledge of the real world is grounded in the causal connections between objects, our senses, and our thoughts. It’s only in the face of skeptical worries that that an account developed along those lines would seem to be insufficient.
On the sense-data theory of perception, “sense-data” are the immediate objects of perceptual awareness. What I am aware of are my own sensations, and physical objects are posits or inferences based on sense-data. (This is the sort of view favored by Russell and by phenomenalists like the early Carnap. There’s also a strong flavor of it in Quine.)
On a view that I favor — somewhere between direct realism a la McDowell or Gibson and critical realism a la Sellars — we can say that what we are aware of is physical objects in Space and Time, but that our awareness is causally mediated by the relation between those objects and our sensory capacities. Sensory information is generated by the play of energies across our various sensory receptors, and that information is neurocomputationally processed to yield person-level awareness of objects.
Because I think there is knowledge of reality, and we can indeed understand how it be so. I think that we do have cognitive contact with objective reality, and that is grounded in the complex causal relations between brains, bodies, and the objects and relations in our environments.
walto,
Put your logic cap on.
You write:
Yes. In other words, all the evidence for a-e is evidence for (a). It’s also evidence for (b), (c), (d), and (e).
Hence my question: If all of those hypotheses are coherent and fit the evidence, on what rational basis can you claim to know that (a) is true and the rest aren’t?
It can’t be because most people believe (a) and not the others, because most people might be wrong. It can’t be because your intuition prefers (a), because your intuition might be wrong.
How would you answer the question?
Fifth’s hilarious time-travel hypothesis inspired me to Google “Jesus time travel”. Here’s one of the things that came up:
CONSPIRACY theorists claim this painting could be proof of time travel amid claims it shows Jesus with a Sputnik Satellite-like object.
Compare that with the original painting below. They not only covered up the Father with Sputnik, they photoshopped his hand away from the right “antenna”.
The actual explanation of the painting, of course, has nothing to do with satellites or time travel:
Incidentally, fifth would insist that the original painting is inaccurate because the Father, being timeless, cannot interact with the universe, which is within time.
Jesus is the only one who should have his hand on an “antenna”, by fifth’s logic, so the photoshopper got it right.
The original painting:
keiths:
KN:
Right, which is precisely why you don’t want to ignore those skeptical worries! The question can’t be answered truthfully if you do.
You’re saying, in effect, “I like my account of knowledge, even though it’s not correct, and I don’t want to give it up. Therefore I’ll just ignore these pesky skeptical worries.”
The evidence for (a) is also evidence for
There’s a tree in front of me or I’m a jack-o-lantern.
In fact, it’s also evidence for
There’s a tree in front of me and I’m a jack-o-lantern.
The point is that there is evidence for (b) – (e) only because there’s evidence for (a). The evidence for (a) is providing ALL the evidence we have in every scenario on your list. The rest of the stuff is just parasitic on the evidence we have for (a). We don’t have any evidence for the demon, we only have evidence for the tree or the demon, and that’s because we have evidence for the tree.
As I said, a worry is not warrant.
keiths:
KN:
That doesn’t answer the question. What is the “dilemma”, and why do we need to be “saved” from it?
You’ve said that you agree with Cartesian skepticism. Why not embrace it?
Who said anything about traveling back in time???
What are you talking about???
It’s obvious you don’t have a clue what is being proffered. I’m not talking about time travel. I’m talking kairos time verses chronos time.
quote:
In the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, before the Divine Liturgy begins, the Deacon exclaims to the Priest, «Καιρός του ποιήσα τω Κυρίω’», Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio, ” (“It is time [kairos] for the Lord to act”); indicating that the time of the Liturgy is an intersection with Eternity.
end quote:
from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos
I never cease to be amazed at the shallow straw-man understanding that the typical atheist has of theological topics. I’m not sure why I even bother.
You’ve went from talking about butts and moonings to posting pictures with sputnik and talking about time travel.
And they call me annoying
peace
walto,
You haven’t made that case at all. You’re just asserting it.
Evidence provides support for a hypothesis if it matches the predictions of that hypothesis. There’s no rider that says “and some other particular hypothesis, too.”
No, that’s not what he is saying. Or, at least, it is not what I take KN to be saying.
Rather, I take him to be saying that those skeptical ideas are implausible, given KN’s view of perception.
Neil,
He’s stated flat out that he agrees with Cartesian skepticism:
Really, you think I have evidence other than that I’m seeing a tree for the claim that either I’m seeing a tree or I’m being deceived by an evil demon? Please tell me what is the evidence that I’m being deceived by an evil demon.
walto,
Does the phrase “underdetermination of theory” ring a bell?
BTW, I think KN’s suggestion about Quine is wrong. I also don’t agree with the claim about Russell, but his claim about early Russell is orthodox. IMO, all he (and Moore too) meant by “sense-data” was “data (whatever it is) that’s provided by our senses.” That we apprehend sense-data was supposed to be consistent with direct realism as well as with phenomenalism. It’s whatever it is that we’re acquainted with. Could be the surface of physical objects. He’s quite clear on this in his 1913 reply to Dawes-Hicks.
I don’t think he was always clear about it, though, and a lot of people have been confused by his writings on the subject. And, as said above, I think KN’s view is orthodoxy at this point.
fifth:
No, you’re not. You wrote:
There’s no kairos term in the equations of relativity, Einstein.
Slow down and think, fifth. You’re just digging the hole deeper.
There is NO evidence whatever for the demon hypothesis. There IS evidence for the tree. The only evidence for the tree or the demon is the evidence for the tree.
I don’t know about an evil demon but there is lots of evidence that you are a Boltzmann’s brain. It’s a near certainty given our understanding of thermodynamics
If you make it past that hurdle there is also good evidence that evolution has made it so that you have no cognitive connection with objective reality.
peace
…because walto says so, and he REALLY means it.
Does the phrase “underdetermination of theory” ring a bell, walto?
Of course there is not I never claimed there was.
Relativity is relevant only to demonstrate that time is wait for it……… relative.
Maybe you should go back to mocking comments about butts.
It’s apparently more up your alley than actually discussing theological topics.
peace
Chronos time, fifth.
Your invocation of kairos was a Hail Mary pass. It went incomplete, perhaps because you aren’t Catholic.
Why not take a breather and think through all of this, fifth? You’re in a tough spot. Make your next move a wise one rather than an impulsive one.
I suppose if all we know is thermodynamics and stay purposefully ignorant of biology, maybe it’s true that we might conclude that we’re more likely to be Boltzmann’s Brains than people. But that seems to me a passing strange way to look at the world.
If you think I’m wrong and DO have evidence for the demon hypothesis, please provide it. I’ve asked you for this several times and received nothing to date. In fact, of the about 30 questions I’ve asked you on this thread, I don’t think you’ve answered any of them.
walto,
Evidence for the tree is evidence for the demon hypothesis. That is my answer to your question. It’s why I keep mentioning “underdetermination of theory”, and it’s why I wrote this:
If you disagree with my answer, fine — present a counterargument. But don’t pretend I haven’t answered your question.
Ii don’t think evidence for the tree is evidence for the demon hypothesis, perhaps because I don’t think that anything that ‘matches the predictions of a hypothesis’ is evidence for that hypothesis–assuming ‘matches’ means ‘is consistent with.’ Or my evidence that i’m typing now would be evidence that you’re blonde.
Maybe you mean something else by ‘matches’? If so, what is it?
fifth:
walto:
Actually, knowledge of biology is irrelevant to the Boltzmann brain question. There’s nothing special about human brains as far as quantum fluctuations are concerned. They’re just one more possible configuration of matter.
Anyway, despite fifth’s characterization, the Boltzmann brain question is not a settled issue. See this paper by Boddy, (Sean) Carroll, and Pollack:
[Emphasis added]
walto,
I do think that. This harks back to a long discussion of Hempel’s Paradox we had at AtBC (that Rich will fondly remember), but I think (along with Popper) that a theory’s success consists partly in its ability to survive observations, each of which constitutes a potential falsification. As a hypothesis survives more and more potential falsifications, our confidence in it increases.
So the demon hypothesis is in fact supported by observations that are consistent with it, and those observations also happen to be consistent with hypothesis (a) — the hypothesis that the tree is really there and that it matches our perception of it.
Now, you might object that the demon hypothesis is consistent with any observation, and is therefore unfalsifiable, and you’d be right — it is. But here’s what I think you’re overlooking: so is hypothesis (a). The fact that hypothesis (a) survives a particular observation means no more than the fact that the demon hypothesis does.
I’ll pause here to see if you’re following me up to this point.
Well, what is this evidence for the tree? Do I have evidence of a tree, or do I simply have evidence that I have sensory perceptions that I associate with “tree” and assume a tree from that?
That’s what the more die-hard skeptics would say, it seems to me. And I think they at least raise a point worthy of some consideration, especially that there’s a kind of gulf between settling on the tree as the explanation for sense perceptions and the mere fact that I have perceptions that lead me to believe that there is a tree involved in all of this.
I think I do mostly agree with what you’re saying, actually. It just seems to me that there is a problem in saying that there’s evidence for the tree when I think part of the problem is that we never really can undeniably confirm the tree as the source of the sensory data. We can see it, then feel it, smell it, taste part of it, hear the rustle of the leaves in the wind, and the cross-correlations seem to at least show a lack of a hallucinating brain, but it’s still a fact that we just have sensory data and no direct “mental contact” with said “tree.” We can dismiss any number of hypotheses as meaningless, what we can’t do is move beyond sensory data to the tree itself.
Maybe it’s extremely unlikely that we’re in a simulation, but what do we know of ultimate reality itself? I think that’s where the skeptic would head. Fine, I see a tree, and it’s in a field, and there’s ants, etc., etc., but that’s just my senses and not getting “ultimate reality.” To be sure, maybe “ultimate reality” is also meaningless, but even if true that doesn’t mean that I necessarily see the tree and field and ants because they’re actually there.
The way I look at it is that by all of the evidence we did evolve, and, if it’s not really the case that we see “reality” because of that (perceived colors don’t seem to relate to light, for instance, but to our eyes and brains), we do see trees and people and what-not because they really do have the characteristics that can sensibly be perceived and conceived as basically integral entities, and it has been evolutionarily beneficial for us to see them that way.
It seems to me that one has to argue in terms of our own capabilities, as they have (apparently) evolved to provide reasonably correct conceptions, in order to make a coherent practical case for our brains mapping reality more or less as it likely is. We can’t eliminate Cartesian skepticism, to be sure, but that we evolved to recognize the world in a meaningful and reasonably accurate manner fits the evidence as does nothing else. Only in that sense do we have evidence for the tree, because by no means does the tree simply provide evidence for itself, it merely supplies the data that we have to construct into a tree (so it appears).
The problem with simulations is that, if good enough, they might themselves allow for an evolution that produces simulated organisms that understand their simulated realities as well as we think we understand our “actual reality.” On the other hand, the computations would probably be far more than we understand as possible (we could be wrong about this aspect of simulation, but is there any better reason to think we’re wrong about the computation problem than that this might be a simulation at all?), and why a simulation rather than an experiment anyway?
In the end, we sense that we’re in a world that evolves organisms that come to sense their world in a largely consistent representational (mapping, anyway) manner. It’s an internally consistent picture, at least, and seems to be self-sufficient. Demons, simulations, and brains in vats seem to be tack-ons (as you note) that might work in some theoretic sense, but certainly cannot at present be shown to be possible in practice.
Unless this all changes, we seem to be justified in taking this as being of what reality consists.
Glen Davidson
Glen,
The problem with that stance is that the sense data you are using to conclude that we evolved is potentially unreliable, just like the sense data that walto is using to conclude that there’s a tree in front of him.
A Cartesian demon could manipulate the data in either case.
Yes, but you’re just going with a negative. We could be wrong. I conceded that.
We could be right. If we were to be right we’d need for the picture we have to sensibly turn out to be self-consistent, for instance, that sentient organisms would appear via evolution or some such thing. Looks right. Looks possible.
God can do anything? A demon can do anything? Why would I take either of those as meaningful claims? Aren’t we in FMM-land then? In some bare sense I can’t rule it out, but I have no excuse to take it as anything more than a theoretic, if basically meaningless, possibility.
Glen Davidson
Glen,
You don’t have to go that far. If they might be capable of fooling us, that’s enough.
No, because a Cartesian skeptic simply acknowledges that we can’t rule those things out. Fifth goes further — way further — and claims to actually know that the Christian God exists.