Re: Which Singularity Don't You Want?

::: Well, that's a bit disingenuous. The materialist claims to know
::: that it's physical, algorithmic, evolved, biochemical, contingent,
::: etc. etc. That's a fair bit, with lots of implications.

:: More along the lines of, claims to know that it *could* be; that
:: additional hypotheses aren't, yet, justified.

: "Dr. Dave" <dtate@xxxxxxx>
: In theory, that's true. In practice, there are no physicalists (at
: least in my limited experience) who question any of those things; it's
: a package deal. I suppose you could have a physicalist
: (Presbyterian?) version of Intelligent Design, but I've never run
: across it.

I'm not sure how intelligent design fits into this; whether minds must
have been designed is a bit different than whether they need ectoplasm
(or whatever it is they need). But true enough, some physicalists are
a bit too evangelical for my taste. And so perhaps I'm not really a
born-again physicalist.

:: Why do I need a "privileged" scope?

: To avoid the description at the physical level, apparently.

No, the question is, why does it need to be *privileged*,
not why do there need to be scopes.

: No. Forget dualism; let's assume for the moment that physicalism is
: true. I point to The Mechanism (the one and only that is the universe
: running), and say "that's where our beliefs come from".

But then, that's where *everything* comes from. So you haven't said
anything yet. If I ask you where babies come from, and you say
"the big bang"... well, maybe that's a bad example, but the point is,
"where beliefs come from" is really asking how, specifically, they get
their structure. So you can't just say "quarks and stuff", any more
than you can say "quarks and stuff" if you are asked how things come to
be liquid. Or rather, you *can* say it, but in so doing, you haven't
really said anything, you've just repeated the axiom, rather than showing
the derivation of liquidity *from* the axioms.

And, of course, that's where scopes come in. You can discuss liquidity
in terms of atoms and EM forces; you don't need to talk about the quarks
and the strong nuclear force or strings or 'branes, or any such things.
And yet, this scope (ranging from atoms to macroscopic properties of
substances) is in no way *privileged*. It's relative to the context.

:: Well, if you are talking about the system as a whole, then you aren't
:: talking about minds and beliefs and such, unless you think the
:: universe as a whole has these things. Which I see a scarcity of
:: evidence for.

: Huh? You think that minds and their contents are not part of the
: universe?

Sigh. Which part of "as a whole" is giving you problems? My stomach can
withstand moderately concentrated acid solutions, but as a whole, I cannot.
And yet, my stomach (with its contents) is a part of me.

Me-as-a-whole is too high a level to discuss how my stomach resists acids.
And further, there is such a thing as too low a level; no single cell in
my body is particularly better at resisting acids. So where does this
magical ability to resist acids come from, if me-as-a-whole doesn't
have it, and me-considered-a-cell-at-a-time doesn't have it?

You seem to want to skip from quarks and axioms, to everything-that-exists,
with no stops inbetween. This actually seems... disingenuous of you.
It may not *be* disingenuous of you, but it sure seems that way,
after so many rounds of attempting to explain it. It simply doesn't
seem that difficult or even controversial a concept, to me.

: It's not a question of infallibility, but of testability.

And what makes you think perfect tests are possible, or likely?

: Not nearly as unuseful as the hypothesis that the human mind has only
: enough connection to reality to keep us from dying out. Or so it
: seems to me.

It seems obviously wrong, to me. Bacteria have enough connection to
reality to keep from dying out. Yet they don't have minds, and we do.
(And don't go all philosophical-technical-term on me; add quasi if you must).

: If you can trust your eyes, or whatever other mechanism is telling you
: it came up even and keeping the count.

Trust is not binary.

: You're using the machine to calibrate itself. Why do you think you
: can do that effectively?

What effects are you interested in? Apparently, perfection,
or something like it. I freely admit that this is no way to get at The
Absoloute Ultimate Truth About Life, The Universe, And Everything, merely
successive approxmations, and no guarantee (beyond a strong appearance)
of convergence. But I don't see any evidence that that's an acheivable
goal, or a goal that human minds are likely to be capable of. And therefore
not something that needs explaining about human minds.

: How? No, really, it's a serious question. Think about the wasp that
: kills a spider, sets it down outside its burrow, goes in to check that
: the coast is clear, comes out, moves the spider inside, and lays eggs
: in it. If you move the spider while the wasp is inside the burrow
: checking, it will come back, put the spider back where it was, and go
: in to check again. If you move the spider every time, it will keep
: checking again every time, until it starves to death.

Your point escapes me. We act less sphexishly than the wasp,
it acts more sphexishly than we, so what?

: If we have programmed illogical behaviors like this, we can't know it,
: for the same reason the wasp can't.

So what? (Actually, we could know it or find some cases of it[1],
because we could build a logic engine that's beyond the capacity of the
human mind in terms of correlating behaviors over spans of time, in the
same way we can calculate odds and show our native, unassisted reasoning
about them is faulty, but suppose you find that unsatisfying; so what?
The universe, its metaphysics, physics, and the whole nine yards is not,
so far as I can see, in the business of giving me/us a free pass to
understanding LtUaE. Tough noogies.)


[1] resemblance to the halting problem noted


Wayne Throop throopw@xxxxxxxxx http://sheol.org/throopw
.

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