Re: Adventures in Unicornian Logic!

On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:45:31 -0700, boots <no@xxxxx> wrote:

Josh Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

What is perhaps amazing is that adaptive complexity can arise given
the vagaries of chance. In part I think that's a reflection of the
fact that the world is actually a remarkably static place, even on
geological time scales, from the point of view of chemical reactions
like us -- which is of course partly a reflection of the fact that
we've evolved to fit within that region of stability. (It's been
noted, forex, that the more ancient an organism, the higher the
temperatures at which it can survive.) To an unknown degree, it's a
reflection of the anthropic principle.

That went almost entirely over my head.

Hmmm. Just read it over and it didn't seem to me particularly
abstruse. Essentially, I'm saying that it's amazing that life evolved
and persists despite the fact that it's so fragile, that it can be so
easily damaged by minor fluctuations in temperature, planetary
impacts, what have you. But to to that extent is I think to strip out
the significance.

Again you're assuming that life evolved, that the universe came into
existence as unliving matter, and that chemical and/or other activity
then caused life to evolve. I'm not attacking there, I'm just stating
your assumptions, not judging them.

Within that view the universe came into existence (screw the question
of how/why for now) with an entire atomic structure for material
existence in evidence. From nothing to a something that includes all
of material reality sans life/artifacts. The complexity level of
material reality, even excluding all life, is pretty high. It isn't
just one glob of stuff made from stuff, it's a bunch of things made of
different elements with atomic interaction in some kind of order,
electrons and protons and quarks and all the other little dancing ***
doing its little dance.

But you're seriously underestimating the subtlety of current theory.
Put "spontaneous symmetry breaking" in a search engine if you're
interested.

Now, given the difference between nothing and all of physical reality
excluding life, the addition of life is a fairly trivial deal in terms
of added complexity.

What I am saying is that I don't believe the universe was created as
matter absent life. I think rather that the entire universe
*including* life was created at once. The complexity difference is
not that great. Nevermind the theological implications of the word
"created", the universe popped into existence through whatever
mechanism or no mechanism at all, all at once, fully configured and
including life.

Unfortunately, that isn't suggested by the evidence, e.g., the cosmic
background radiation.

Moreover, I think that the physical universe has not existed
continually since the big-bang or whatever creation myth you prefer

Are you sure you want to say that? Because cosmologists have this over
you: research and theory. To equate their work with superstition is to
make it very difficult for me to refrain from insults.

but that it lasts a very brief time, perhaps on the order of one
planck-second, then it disappears and is created again from scratch
with all its components intact but with a few trivial changes in
place.

Sort of a cosmic pull down mechanism, eh? I don't see any evidence for
(or against) temporal discreteness here and I'm not sure what
destruction and creation would mean under those circumstances: why
would the universe bother? What would the predicted consequences be,
other than those few trivial changes? How would it differ from the
many worlds hypothesis?

But I think it's also important to consider that, as I mentioned the
other day, we're the products of a remarkable phenomenon of selection
-- successful reproduction extending in an unbroken line for billions
of years. And that's it's backed up by [insert ten to the lots of
zeros here] varied backups.

Which being said, we're sophisticated enough in our analyses of things
to survive and prosper. This is true even of animals much "dumber"
than ourselves (I used quotes because evolution is cognitive).

You are making a lot of assumptions because of your worldview that I
do not necessarily share. After all, instead of believing as you
appear to that the universe was created once in static completeness
and then within that fixed system man somehow evolved, it is my view
that the entire universe was spontaneously generated complete in its
every detail, not once but continually, at a rate that may approach
once per planck-second, with slight modifications in each successive
iterative creation. Some concepts cross between those worldviews and
others do not.

I"m not sure what you mean. The many worlds hypothesis might be
interpreted that way,

Screw the many-worlds-hypothesis thought up by Joe Hinkbottom or who
the fuckever, are we only permitted to think in terms of existing
conceptualizations? Fucksake, let's not go there please.

Huh? I thought up the many worlds hypothesis myself, as I'm sure many
others have, before I came across the real version. It's a fairly
obvious interpretation of quantum mechanics. Which being said, I
mentioned it because it has something that you so far have failed to
make clear in your own hypothesis -- consistency with successful
theory.

but only at the quantum level -- on our scale,
contemporary quantum effects (as opposed to those which occurred early
in the history of the universe) seldom have much of an effect on
outcomes.

I'm not sure what you mean by "static completeness." I think the
universe exists as mathematical possibility. Mathematical possibility
mandates creation. But each mathematical possibility carries with it
its own constraints, constraints which make other possibilities
inaccessible. Which is to say that it's impossible in a given quantum
world for Schroedinger's Cat to be both dead and alive. We're all made
up, ultimately, of the same stuff -- space -- but one interpretation
can't see the other interpretations.

See the above blah blah.

Now you're just sounding like an arrogant ignorant ***. Where are the
falsifiable predictions made by your theory? By what right do you
discard a century of successful work and thought -- work with which
you don't seem to be particularly familiar, and for which you don't
appear to have developed an equally efficacious substitute?

I do not believe that a maximally useful worldview is any more readily
available to modern-baby than was available to cave-baby, the fact
that modern life provides more accoutrements than primitive life does
not affect the ability of the baby to perceive and conceptualize, it
only makes the perceptual array more dizzying.

You're ignoring the accumulation of knowledge. We can make a spear;
our ancestors couldn't make a computer. The individual may be no
smarter (or smarter at some things and dumber at others), but society
is.

I am not ignoring the accumulation of knowledge, I am intentionally
tossing it out because neither modern-baby nor cave-baby knows any of
that. Tabula-rasa or what the fuckever you want to call it, they come
into the world with the same level of mental competence but the poor
fucking modern-baby has more confusing *** to weed out before getting
at whatever might be the truth.

How charmingly Unicornian of you. Where do you propose to stop? At the
knowledge of the salamander? The sea slug? Protozoa?

is that this
practical mechanism doesn't easily coexist with the intellectual
honesty of Gallilean science. Perhaps it can't: intellectuals aren't
always the most practical people, and the most practical people, while
they may be smart, typically aren't intellectuals. But this is why we
have specialization. It's given to some people to understand, some to
lead, most to follow.

2. If there is a higher being and it wants me to be fucked, well I'm
fucked and that's all there is to it, no sense pissing around about
it.

3. If there is a higher being and it wants me to be not-fucked, there
are many possibilities.

I'm putting my money on #3 there. It's the one that actual occurrence
has shown to be the best available working hypothesis. Your mileage
may of course vary, your neighborhood of the multiverse could truly
suck major ass for all I know.

You've shown me no evidence of that.

If you cannot find evidence within the flow of occurrence itself then
anything I could possibly tell you is painting wasted on the blind.

Weasel noted.

Consider it what you wish.

If there's a higher being, and
he's concerned with us, surely he would put an end to Windows?

Cute. Windows contains the seeds of its own destruction, it still
carries forward badly designed low-level interfaces from its earliest
versions for purposes of compatability. The only way to remedy the
basic problems within Windows is to restructure its operating-system
interfaces and they may not do that because of the very
developer-buyin and compatability issues that brought them market
dominance.

Right, they're pigs who put marketing ahead of quality. But it is
possible to make a transition with backwards compatibility if you do
it right. They never have. Their "improvements" are slapdash and
cockamamie. They actually end up sacrificing a bit of compatibility
with every new release, but never moving in the right direction --
they just layer on more Byzantine junk, riddled with new
inconsistencies and exceptions. They seem not to have a clear thinker
in the lot of them.

Clear thinkers are not easy to find, and we are fuckall costly.

Clear thinkers aren't interested in working for Microsoft or, if they
are, they're beaten down by the corporate culture.

If there's a higher being and ditto, why is it that an old atheist like
me is happy and healthy while saintly faithful 20-year-olds get run
over by buses or eaten by tidal waves?

There is an old saying that the good die young. Bad things don't
happen to people who can't learn from them anyway, it's pointless.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

That's because your worldview is the stupidest one I can imagine.

Yeah, well, you take the hocus pocus, I'll take the penicillin.

It isn't either/or Josh, penicillin exists in my world the same as it
exists in your world. The data is the same, only its interpretation
differs.

You've shown no falsifiable predictions that would suggest your
interpretation has merit.

--
Josh

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.
We know now that it is bad economics." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
.