Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/packer_regen.html
Except BBs have more to loose. They have to give up their illusion. A normal observer would not have as far to fall by giving up epistemological autonomy.
I do realize that given FG’s worldview it would be impossible to know if one is a normal observer rather than a BB…. That is the point after all
I don’t have that desperation so I guess that makes me a peculiar observer. 😉
I expect you already thought that of me
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
(1Pe 2:9 KJV)
It’s just the inevitable implications of thermodynamics in a universe sans God
There is a recent thread about BBs on this very site. I think they are a fascinating topic surely more interesting for you than me talking about a God you don’t accept.
Do you think it would be better to move this conversation over there?
peace
I do find pretty funny that no one has yet pointed out to FMM what I take to be a fairly obvious line of thought:
a scientific metaphysics of mind (basing one’s account of our psychological capacities and incapacities on evolutionary theory, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, etc.) gives us an empirically confirmed causal explanation of our basic empirical judgments in terms of reliable maps of our physical and social environments.
So naturalists are right to be untroubled by Boltzmann brains, Plantinga’s EAAN, Cartesian skepticism, or Putnam’s brain in a vat. None of these thought experiments have any bearing on a scientific metaphysics of mind. They’re just red herrings, maybe fun diversions but not worth taking seriously.
leave it to KN to write a paragraph when a few words will do
I think he is trying to say is that a “naturalists” conclusions lead to what he thinks are reliable maps of reality.
To that I would wholeheartedly agree.
I would however ask how a “naturalist” can possibly know that what he believes are reliable maps actually are reliable maps given things like Boltzmann brains, Plantinga’s EAAN, Cartesian skepticism, or Putnam’s brain in a vat.
peace
Perhaps entertaining thought-experiments that naturalists ought not take seriously — that is, it would be inconsistent for naturalists to take them seriously.
Why should you not take them seriously?? Given that the odds of your senses and reason being reliable is so low?
It seems to me that it’s shows the upmost in inconsistency given that you place so much emphasis on following the lead of your senses and reasoning up till you don’t like what they tell you.
peace
We don’t have to get so exotic as BB.
I’m just middle aged and I already notice that my senses are not as crisp as they used to be. I am therefore less likely to trust my senses than I did when I was 20.
By the same token the wisdom of age shows me that I would have been better off if I had not leaned on my own reasoning as much as I did back then.
This realization does not bother me too much because I don’t depend ultimately on my own senses or reason for knowledge of the world.
If I was so inclined I would be alarmed to say the least because my senses and reason are often telling me that they can’t always be trusted.
I’m Just curious why you aren’t overly concerned about this stuff.
It appears that you are ignoring your noetic and sensory faculties while simultaneously claiming that you don’t do that.
peace
BBs is real a issue of physics for the cosmology of the far, far future (not now). At least, as far as cosmologists are concerned, they are.
I agree the rest are philosophical thought experiments only, only one of which had its script optioned by Hollywood (although the Disney channel is said to be interested in a 10-part series on a school for teens in training to fight Cartesian demons).
https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.00850
How do you know we are not living in the far future right now and imagining it’s 2019 because it is more mentally stimulating?
Sans God that seems to be more likely to be the case than just happening to be lucky to live in the more interesting time.
BBs are vastly more likely than real humans in our universe.
Doesn’t the Copernican principle require that we assume we are ordinary but mistaken about the date rather than right about the date and very very special?
peace
Correct
No, the existence of BBs hinges on a number of details concerning the cosmological model and the possibility of conscious observers emerging from out of a thermal bath. I don’t see why absence of belief in the Christian God forces me to accept those details.
I don’t think that is necessary. Boltzmann brains is just the stick you are using as part of your general claim that I have no reason to trust my senses. You state this explicitely in your comment above. As you concede yourself, absent your protective presuppositions, you have as much reason to trust or distrust your senses as I do.
1) I would be interested in knowing why exactly given your worldview conscious observers can’t emerge
2) I would be interested in knowing what the independent evidence was for a cosmological model that prohibits BBs and why you feel confident in rejecting the consensus of cosmologists a prioi in this regard
Correct, given what our senses and reason themselves tell us we have very little reason to be confident in our reason and senses to reflect reality.
Yet we don’t seem to doubt that we can trust them
I find that to be interesting and very telling. Our trust calls out for explanation.
I can explain my trust by appealing to a loving God I want to know how you explain it.
peace
BruceS,
I really liked the paper you linked here is the money quote:
“The problem is that BB-dominated models are self-undermining, or cognitively unstable – we cannot simultaneously believe that such a modelis correct, and believe that we have good reasons for such a belief.”
I would just add that if a model that allows BBs is correct we don’t have good reasons for any belief whatsoever
Though I don’t accept Carroll’s conclusion that we therefore reject models that allow BBs I think that his observation hints at what I’m trying to explore here.
peace
I have a question about the Boltzmann brain hypothesis. The idea is that brains will spontaneously self-assemble due to random particle collisions under thermodynamic equilibrium, right? But everything we know about how brains actually work requires far-from-equilibrium dynamics — neurocomputations require some far-from-equilibrium state that can exploit energy gradients. Put otherwise: the free energy principle cannot work when every system and subsystem is at maximum entropy. Unless I’m very much mistaken, there’s no way that “Boltzmann brains” could function as brains: there could not carry out computations.
I would watch that.
You are not taking into account Shannon’s contribution that any universal Turing machine no matter how simple can accomplish any computable function whatsoever given enough time.
There is just no reason to require BB’s be complex at all. They can have as few as just 2 internal states.
peace
This seems bizarre to me. What prior probabilities are you using to determine that the “the odds of my senses and reason being reliable is so low”? What’s the basis of those probabilities?
My senses and reason are reliable in the following perfectly obvious sense: I can walk from my kitchen to my bathroom without knocking into the couch, I can avoid getting into accidents when I drive, I remember where my keys are and where my parents live, and I can recognize errors and insights in the philosophical arguments I read. I can tell when a politician or pundit is selling us bullshit in order to advance an unethical agenda and I can tell when an unscrupulous poster at the TSZ is not arguing in good faith.
You seem to think I need to believe in divine revelation in order to be justified in asserting any or all of the above. But since that’s just your presupposition and you’ve never given us any argument, I think you’re just bullshitting.
I don’t understand how a system at maximum entropy could have more than one state, and a system that has a single state cannot carry out any computations.
This not a probabilistic argument.
I’m just using the observation that my senses and reasoning are often not reliable. We all have that experience. Add to that things like BB and EAAN and you are left with the inescapable conclusion that you can’t trust your senses and reason unless you have a valid reason to do so.
Not at all. I just want to know how you can assume that your senses and reason are reliable despite the obvious and persistent evidence to the contrary.
Perhaps you have a perfectly valid reason I’d just like to hear it
peace
Quantum fluctuations dictate that maximum entropy never ever arrives.
We just have eternal expansion with periodic emergence of BBs forever
peace
Other perceptions and reasons have shown this, I take it.
I still don’t know what “often not reliable” is supposed to mean in this context. Am I supposed to think that my eyes are “often not reliable” because I need contact lenses to have 20/30 vision? Or that my ears are “often not reliable” because there exist frequencies above and below the normal range of human hearing? Are my senses “unreliable” because I cannot see gamma rays, I cannot hear X-rays, and I cannot smell dark matter? I mean, my senses are good enough to allow me to get a glass of milk from the fridge when I want one — why is that “not good enough”? What is your standard by which you are judging that “the senses are often not reliable” ?
As for the BB: it seems pretty clear to me that if you want me to take this seriously, then the burden is on you (or anyone, really) to show that random quantum fluctuation are sufficient to generate neurocomputational states that are sufficient to underpin mental states. (You need the neurocomptutational states in there since we’re committed to talking about Boltzmann brains.) And since I don’t even think that mental states supervene on neurocomputational states alone (in the absence of brain-body-world causal loops), the burden of proof is pretty damn high. We’d need to get cosmologists, physicists, and computational neuroscientists to sit down and figure out whether the Boltzmann brain hypothesis is even coherent before we start worrying about its implications for epistemology.
The EAAN has similar problems: it’s not even coherent because Plantinga just didn’t bother to learn enough evolutionary theory and cognitive neuroscience. It’s a bullshit, just-so story. Churchland makes it perfectly clear in his 2005 criticism to Plantinga why Plantinga is wrong, and Plantinga’s dismissive response shows that he still just does not get it.
From your link:
“ AI research began in 1950, and so is now 65 years old. If we are currently in a random moment during AI research then it could be estimated that there is a 50% probability of AI being created in the next 65 years, i.e. by 2080.
Based on this assumption, in 1960 the was a 50% probability AI would be created by 1970, in 1970 the probability was 50% by 1990,
In 1951 the probability was 50% that it would be created in 1952.
The more research, the longer it takes to reach 50% probabilty
Maybe viewing it as random moment is not warranted in this case.
When I take the time to examine my reasoning faculties and senses I am struck with the inevitable conclusion that my senses and reasoning faculties often contradict each other!!!!! and I must choose one conclusion over another
The criteria I use when I must choose is correspondence to my presupposition.
I am curious as to what criteria you use and why. I just don’t know of any criteria except the Christian God that is sufficient to make that determination for reasons we have discussed at length.
As of right now It seems that you are using your unreliable senses and reason to decide which of your unreliable senses and reason to accept. That is comically illogical on it’s face………. at least it appears to be
peace
Perhaps, It really depends on your perspective.
we can make an assumption that the farther you are from 1952 the more likely you are to beyond the 50% point.
Unless we are very special it is very unlikely we are not there by now or…….. past there if looking at the prediction made in the article
If there is one thing that science sans God teaches us it’s that we are not special!!!!
The whole principle of mediocrity and the doomsday argument are fascinating to me. It’s sort of the anti-strong anthropic principle.
It seems like a great way to make predictions about all sorts of things that seem at first to be beyond the scope of science.
peace
The wood stove doesn’t look hot but the sizzling sound and smell of flesh burning and the pain in my hand tells me otherwise. Doubtful that it takes a presupposed belief in a deity to understand why one would reach the conclusion that the wood stove is hot despite my lying eyes!
Yes, if your conclusion relies on you having 20/30 vision. A bigger problem is that often our eyes deceive us even when we have 20/30 vision
If your conclusion relies on observations above or below the normal range of human hearing then yes
A bigger problem of course is that often our hearing is unreliable within the normal range of human hearing. And we all know it is
And How would they do so???
By using the very things that ordinary experience have established to be unreliable. You don’t need BBs to prove that your senses and reason are unreliable you know they are.
Our best cosmological guess right now given your worldview is that sans God the universe will expand forever and therefore you are a BB.
There is tons of evidence that the universe is expanding and that that expansion is accelerating only a science denier like a YEC would try to deny it at this point.
The point of Carroll’s paper is to argue that we can’t conclude that despite the evidence because the inescapable implication is that we can’t trust our senses and reason.
But we already knew that.
peace
Or so you BB mind imagines.
It’s vastly more likely that there is no stove at all and you are just making it all up.
Perhaps it’s not you eyes that are lying but your brain.
You just accept your lying brain is right because it is harder to ignore at the moment.
harder to ignore is not a very good reason to accept something, don’t you agree?
peace
I do find my scepticism on this growing. It’s not even clear what the physics of the high-entropy medium out of which BBs arise is supposed to look like. Is it quantum vacuum or rearrangement of existing matter? If the latter, as far as I can see it’s either gonna be black holes or widely dissipated particles of mass-energy. In neither of those environments can I see ‘brains’ arising. Saying ‘but it’s infinite’ does nothing if the probability is zero.
Carroll’s concern is that if a cosmology leads to BBs it’s self-contradictory. But
1) If I am a BB, it is very unlikely that I arose from a cosmology I only imagined.
2) If a cosmology can give rise to OOs (Ordinary Observers) and BBs, why can’t we be in the OO phase? It must be passed through on the way.
seems your belief system is dependent on these hypothetical constructs. I find that to be quite a sad state to find oneself in but feel free to act like BB actually exist.
Ahhh…a probability argument from fifth. Care to put some numbers to that assertion, fifth?
What does a hot woodstove look like in your world, fifth?
You haven’t provided any evidence that my brain was lying instead you’ve just made an assertion, without any evidence, that this is so.
Obviously, my brain wasn’t lying given the sensory input and subsequent conclusions from my sense of smell and touch. The stove doesn’t look hot but further data indicates that it is, indeed, very hot. I don’t need imaginary deities to parse this situation and come to a conclusion.
PeterP,
FMM writes a lot of stuff–and will repeat some of it a thousand times–but all of it comes down to his thinking you have to know that you know in order to know (which he’ll now robotically and erroneously deny). It’s ridiculous, but he can’t learn that it is because he doesn’t want to.
Both are subject to limitations, is that a possible conclusion?
I really have no idea where you got that Idea.
I knew for certain that God existed before I could even read let alone discuss BB
I don’t need numbers to say it’s more likely.
In an infinite expanding universe real human brains are vastly more rare than BBs simply because effectively infinite is more than 100 billion or so.
Depends on how hot it is or if I’ve spit on it.
Again it’s more likely you brain is lying than not.
You yourself are aware of many times when your brain has reached faulty conclusions this is not unprecedented.
The question is not what evidence do I have that it’s wrong you know it’s wrong at times
The question is what possible reason do you have for trusting it given that knowledge.
peace
LOL not this again
I know lots of stuff I don’t even know that I know.
I thought you were finally able to get past this blind spot.
again…….
I’m not saying you don’t know stuff of course you know stuff
I believe you know stuff because God reveals stuff too you.
Since you claim not to believe that
I’m asking you what reason do you have to believe that you know stuff given your worldview.
You’ve already granted that you have no reason. I’m fine with that. I just find it fascinating and odd in the extreme.
No one else has made that admission though so the conversation continues
peace
You need to elaborate
Both what?
Both conclusions? Both your reason and your senses??
Both my worldview and yours?
peace
Given the proven unreliable conclusions from your sense of smell and touch. You simply accepted your brain because it could not be ignored.
Exactly like a schizophrenic who decides to listen to the voices in his brain because he can’t ignore them.
peace
I doubt that is the case.
well bless your heart, fifth.
However, you do need some supporting evidence to turn that assertion into something tangible.
Why would that matter? If you are going to rely on your eyes to make a determination of ‘red hot’ you should realize that the wood stove is painted red. What data does spitting add that would override your other senses and any conclusions drawn from them.
No, that assertion doesn’t gain strength through repetition sans evidence that is the case.
sure I can look over at the wood stove right now and it doesn’t look hot at all. My other senses tell me not to believe those lying eyes of mine. Is my brain reaching faulty conclusions when my other senses tell me not to use my bare hand to open/touch the wood stove?
Begs the question without any context. What times is it wrong and why is it I can ascertain it is wrong if I cannot believe my senses? My eyes say not hot but the burns on my hand say it is. Oh dear what to believe?
Pragmatism. Human senses do not in isolation. It is not the case that I, nor you, operate using one sense at a time. It is a continuum of sensory inputs and analysis. Optical illusions exist but I still look both ways to see if it is safe to cross the street even if the wood stove doesn’t look hot.
As I predicted, nothing but beep boop beep.
I know that I’m typing right now because I believe that I’m typing right now. And I’m justified in this belief because I see my fingers hitting a keyboard right now and letters coming up on my screen.
What actually ails you is that I can’t tell you how I know that I know stuff, while you think saying “revelation” in a certain tone of voice gets you over that hurdle yourself.
Are my, and other human’s and organisms, conclusions from their senses unreliable 100% of the time or is there some other metric we should apply? Clearly my conclusions, in this scenario, were warranted, and thus reliable, that the wood stove is hot despite not looking hot.
Fifth that is just pathetic on so many levels. but I guess that is the go to position for you when you are trying to defend the indefensible.
I’m a proud graduate of the Michael Jackson school of Computer Science:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Jackson
One of the infinite number of Boltzmann Brains in an infinite universe existing for infinite time is guaranteed to come up with imagining the text of the Bible, read and interpret it, and conclude that he isn’t a BB but a guy calling himself FMM who knows that he isn’t a BB because the God of the Bible exists and reveals to him that he isn’t a BB.
No problem at all – until other BB’s start to engage with him on a BB (Bulletin Board).
Jackson Structured Programming. I’m a big fan.
The “exactly like” is completely wrong. The two cases are quite dissimilar, and your insistence on conflating them is leading you badly astray.
Let’s make a distinction here between “corrigible errors” and “incorrigible errors”. Corrigible errors are errors that can be corrected, and incorrigible errors are errors that cannot be corrected.
In ordinary experience — leaving aside all extravagant thought-experiments — perceptual errors are corrected in two distinct ways: we can correct them ourselves and we can be corrected by others.
In cases where we correct our own perceptual errors, the corrections can be synchronic or diachronic, inter-modal or intra-modal. Usually they are synchronic and intra-modal or diachronic and inter-modal. An example of the former would be seeing something from far way, classifying it as being of one kind of thing, then getting closer and realizing that it’s something else; an example of the latter would be hearing someone calling your name, turning around and seeing that there’s no one there.
In cases where others correct us, again there are lots of situations and scenarios that are involved but pretty much all of them require a shared language. One of the major things that languages allow us to do is correct each other, and that gives us a better grip on reality than if the cognitive systems couldn’t pool their semantic resources.
What distinguishes the paranoid schizophrenic is that she’s immune to intersubjective correction: she can’t help but hear the voices as real no matter what other people tell her.
By conflating ordinary perceptual errors with paranoid schizophrenia, you’re conflating corrigible errors with incorrigible errors. That effectively treats all perceptual errors as incorrgible, and that simply conflicts with the phenomenology. (This is why Descartes has to resort to the Dream Argument in the First Meditation in order to force the issue.)
Again the supporting evidence in favor of BB is virtually all of modern cosmology since the discovery that the universal expansion was accelerating.
You’ve obviously have never spit on a hot wood stove. 😉
The evidence is all the many many times in your life you have discovered your mind often plays tricks on you. This is not unprecedented. It happens all the time.
You can’t determine your mind is wrong with out relying on the reliability of your senses.
The problem is of course that often it’s your senses that lead you astray and your mind is correct.
How do you overcome mental isolation without relying on your senses?
I know you do that, I want to know why you do that given your worldview.
peace
Yes, the ability to reason and the ability of the senses.
No, just yours.
Armed with revelation and reason ,speculate on why he does ,as an exercise of what you really know. Devil’s advocate, so to speak.
gezze
Again———–
I’m not asking for justification for your belief that you are typing right now.
I’m asking for justification for your belief that knowledge is possible given your worldview.
You can’t justify knowledge in general by simply assuming the existence of knowledge in general inorder to justify knowledge in a specific instance.
I don’t know why you don’t get that.
Do you grant that a BB could say everything you are saying about typing right now and still not know anything at all about world outside it’s own mind?
peace
The problem is that the senses are useless with out trustworthy reason and reason is blind with out trustworthy senses.
To say that both the senses and reason are limited is all fine and well it’s does not say much you did not already know
The difficult part is in determining where the limits are with no reliable standard to measure them against.
peace
Yes, of course. I mean look at all the research dollars and thecnology being developed to detect and document the BB phenomena.
How hot should the wood stove be for spitting to be a reliable indicator of a hot or cold stove?
Yes of course as well as all the many times in my life where I discovered my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. Happens all the time. More often than not actually.
It is the conclusion being correct or incorrect that is of more concern. the mind concludes based on sensory input and prior experience. Optical illusions exist. However, I’ve never experienced an imaginary car illusion while trying to cross a street. Experience tells me I can trust my senses/eyesight to detect the presence or absence of a car/truck/airplane in close vicinity making a crossing either an acceptable risk or not. My experience in this regard has proven quite reliable.
so reliable, in fact, I pass this experience onto smaller and younger models of humans. I even see other individuals doing the same thing. Imagine that.
Huh? What of you mean by ‘mental isolation’?
Well you don’t actually know that you only know that I have told you that is what I do. I could be lying.
However, the answer should be obvious if you’ve read my entire response.
Sure she can all she has to do is trust that she is hallucinating and take her medication and the voices will fade. She has to be able to determine that or no one would ever take the medication.
The problem of course is that it’s possible given your worldview that the voices are in fact real and the medication is what is making her hallucinate that they don’t exist.
peace
Logically possible, sure. But I only need to worry about excluding logical possibilities if I need logical necessity. And I don’t, because I don’t need certainty.
It’s more than a logical possibility given the demonstrated unreliability of your senses and reason.
A schizophrenic could grant that it’s logically possible that the voices aren’t real and still accept that they are because she does not require certainty.
You are in exactly the same position AFAICT
peace