Re: Was the hebrew bible written by Romans?

On May 6, 7:18 pm, Inabón Yunes <bori...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I guess this conversation is over.
Just read what you posted again, maybe in 5 years, and you wish you never did.
There are a lot of inteligent people here and I enjoy sharing history with them.  You are not one of them.

No, there are many stupid people here. There are very few intelligent
people anywhere, they generally live in very specialist fields, almost
never going multi-disciplinary, and of those, very few spend any time
on Usenet, let alone on a group like this.

Whether you choose to accept my post or not is not my concern. It
demonstrates your ignorance, but you are entirely entitled to that. No-
one can teach a person who is unwilling to learn, not even me.

Those more interested in actually thinking about the issue of whether
reality is subjective or objective might like to try the following
thought experiment:

Imagine a person in a room. In front of them is a computer terminal,
by their side is a phone. They can phone to call for any scientific
apparatus of their choice, so long as it'll fit in the room. At the
other end of the computer terminal is (surprise!) a computer. This
computer has a simulation of a room initially containing a computer
terminal, a phone.and an electronic copy of that same person. (At the
moment, the technology for such a copy doesn't exist, but this is a
thought experiment. Einstein lacked the technology to ride a bicycle
at the speed of light.) The computer has also been programmed with a
"good enough"* model of quantum mechanics. The computer simulation of
the person can also call for scientific apparatus, which of course
will be simulated.

*"Good enough" means that if both the real person and the simulated
person ask for the same experiment, and that experiment is
deterministic, both experiments will produce the same result. It also
means that if the experiment has a level of uncertainty and a
statistical distribution will be produced if you repeat the experiment
enough times, both experiments will produce the same distribution.

Because both individuals start at the same level of complexity, you
cannot differentiate between them through the Turing Test or any other
assessment of complexity or ability. Because the physics is the same,
there is no purely physical experiment you can perform to distinguish
between what is real and what is simulated.

Is there any OTHER test you can perform that can tell which person is
the real person?

The answer, if you accept Descarte's cave, quantum mechanics view that
the universe is nothing more than some entangled photons that exist
everywhere with unequal probability, the neurologists' observations
=or= the Buddhist's belief that reality is just a delusion, is no.
There is nothing you can do to tell them apart. Both the physical
world and the simulated one are equally real/unreal and equally valid.

Now, let's modify the problem a little. Let's say that you have the
same setup as before but the computer simulation is now running a
slightly different model of reality. Not very different, not so
different that anything a-priori known to be true becomes false, but
otherwise not the same as the physical world. The symmetry is broken.
Can you NOW tell which is the real person and which is the simulation?

The answer should again be no. You can't tell which of the two results
is "correct".

You actually can't tell until you have five or more people, of whom at
least half plus one of the people are real AND agree on what the
result should be AND you know that this is the case. This is known in
mathematics as the Byzantine General's Problem, a well-known and well-
studied conundrum. However, if you have half plus one in a consistent
virtual reality and THEY agree on the results, if you did NOT know
that those people were simulated but had, in fact, been told that they
were the ones in reality, the real person would actually end up
believing they were the simulation.

Aside 1: This is how cults operate. A cult is nothing more than an
internally-consistent alternative reality that, by virtue of being the
consensual reality, becomes the reality the initiate accepts no matter
how different it is from any understanding of reality outside of the
cult.

Aside 2: Edward de Bono gets into a lot of this in his Five Day
Thinking Course and rather longer Lateral Thinking Course. But
basically, it boils down to the point that the way we think and what
we perceive is heavily influenced by things that have nothing to do
with any "objective" reality.

Aside 3: Never argue with blind philosophers about elephants.
.

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