Re: Evolution increases the computational ability of organisms.

Tim Tyler <seemy...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
Tim Tyler wrote:
Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

Thus, your repeated nonsense that the universe is
"software being run by 'somebody in charge' for some
purpose".

It isn't.

That should be clearly labeled as speculation.

No, it is just the usual practicing scientist's
rejection of baseless and unnecessary claims.

Sorry: I meant to refer to *my* statement. Of
course yours is equally speculative ;-)

No, there's nothing "speculative" about a habit of
refusing to let ones intellectual landscape be
cluttered with baseless nonsense.

Nobody knows how or why the universe was
created;

So now you've descended to arguments from
ignorance?

I am arguing that /everyone/ is ignorant, on this
subject. There is little relevant data to go on.
We really do not know the answer.

So? Introducing pointless and unnecessary hypotheses
is no more defensible based on general ignorance
than it is based on individual ignorance. In both
cases it still reduces to argument from ignorance.

Why does that so exactly match the behavior of
creationists here?

Oh, yes, "faith based dishonesty".

Aren't creationists claiming there *is* a god?

That's not the behavior you are emulating, though
your hypothesis has incorporated in it the existence
of creatures indistinguishable from gods for the
inhabitants of the simulation.

You are emulating the creationist behavior "you
can't disprove this, as no falsification mechanism
is available or even possible, therefore you are
_obligated_ to consider it on an equal footing with
alternative ideas for which abundant affirming
evidence exists".

No, I'm _not_ under any such obligation, nor are
scientifically literate people in general under any
such obligation, to hear you drone on and on about
this baseless hypothesis, and you've been on about
this for _years_.

That creationist argumentation techhnique is
intellectual dishonesty of the first water.

I'm more like an agnostic: nobody knows if
we are inside a purposeful simulation or not.

So? That's _still_ "argument from ignorance", and
the hypothesis is entirely unnecessary to
understanding the universe.

Occam's razor is about the only available tool -
and it is not clear how to apply that in this
case.

Take away the choice with the largest quantity of
unsupported speculations, is the usual approach.

Positing the intervention of unobserved,
omnipotent entities has always been a
show-stopper for science, so it ends up on the
floor with the other clippings and similar
rubbish.

I see no sign of interventions.

Excuse me? You don't see setting up and running a
simulation to be a universe, and selecting its
parameters to match the strong anthropic principle,
to be an "intervention"? I'd _love_ to put a
measuring instrument on something big enough to
count for you as an "intervention", if "running the
whole universe to ones own whims" doesn't suffice.

*If* there were such signs, they would be helpful
clues - but they seem to be absent.

And "absense of evidence" tells a sane person what
about a hypothesis, one more time? I don't think
"flog it at every opportunity" is the usual answer.

I am not positing such interventions - though we
might of course discover evidence of them in the
future, which would be good evidence favouring the
simulation hypothesis.

"Evidence in the future will/may support this
nonsense, so I'm right to flog it now" -- do you
even listen to yourself?

All the universes which we have *seen* being
created are simulations within our own universe
- but it is not clear whether that can be
extrapolated to the case of our universe itself
via the mediocrity principle.

What part of "understandings gained from
simulations via extrapolations based on observed
behavior of the universe" seems to you inferior
to "understandings based on no observations
whatever, but instead on the need of the
speculator for a comfortable world view"?

How is living in a simulation comforting?

Are you illiterate today, or was that just a non
sequitur that screamed out to be typed?

Doesn't it raise the possibility of the "off"
switch being hit?

Space is full of asteroids. Do I spend my life
worrying about being hit by a meteorite? Nope. That
way lies stark raving lunacy.

So, for the moment, it seems we must wait

Um, that could have been a quote from any ID scam
artist, you realize, and from most of the "we
can't _prove_ evolution in its every excruciating
detail, so let's just wait around immersed in our
sewer of ignorance rather than using what we _do_
know as a model for what is as yet unproved"
crowd posting here.

Sorry if some of my views match those of
creationists.

It's not your views that are so objectionable, it's
the intellectually dishonest arguments you use on
the behalf of those views, the very same set of
tricks our local mendacity artists use and enjoy.

Just so people don't get the wrong idea: I think
the Bible is an awful book - and that Christianity
is one of the worst religions.

I don't notice any religions that aren't "one of the
worst"; am I missing noticing them?

for some more evidence bearing on the issue to
come in before making up our minds on the subject.

Nope, just as in the search for comfort in other
theisms, the need to "keep going further and
further out on a limb with no support" is
counter-indicated by the historical probabilistic
lack of survival of our monkey ancestors who
chose that tactic, as opposed to the "one hand
for you and one for the task" tactic so beloved
of mountain climbers.

If you are arguing that a tendency towards faith
is built in by evolution, I would agree with that.

No, I'm arguing the precise opposite, that nature
uses natural selection to punish irrational
behavior, and that adopting hypotheses on no
evidence is one such irrational behavior.

A look at the anticipated average lifespans of
"soldiers of Allah" will demonstrate that the
punishment is quite as effective today as it was in
the days of our ancestor species.

My position on this issue is essentially
agnosticism. Agnosticism is the *absence* of
faith.

No, it isn't. Your position as stated is that an
evidence-free and incredibly complex hypothesis
deserves serious consideration. What but "faith"
could fuel such a ridiculous position?

The evidence that it is has the same status as
the evidence for werewolves.

We are in a better position to look for
werewolves, though - so our failure to find them
is more conclusive.

Hardly.

Your "theism pretending to be science" would by its
very premises pervade the universe up to its largest
features and down to its smallest components, yet
there is no credible evidence seen for it _anywhere_

...*or* against it. Thus: we don't know.

And yet again you descend to arguing from ignorance.

Why, one more time, does "the universe operates in
response to huge complex mechanisms for which no
evidence whatever exists" seem to you superior to
"the universe operates exactly as we perceive it to
operate with the evidence of our senses and the
measuring devices we use to extend those senses, and
we should work to improve our understanding based on
that evidence rather than on flights of fancy"?

There is little or no relevant evidence.

There is precisely, to infinite precision, _zero_
evidence for "it's all really a computer simulation
and us inside it" -- why does that binary lack of
evidence make the idea to you worth the effort to
flog it for years?

We must postpone any decisions relating to the
issue until some arrives.

Really?

And must I postpone any decisions on the correctness
of the leprechaun hypothesis, too, until some "proof
of nonexistence" arrives?

Your behavior on this issue is quite daft, Tim.

You allow yourself behaviors you would instantly
challenge in others.

[...] immense piles of self-comforting "but
surely it _must_ be this way" speculation by
persons whose mental models cannot abide a
purpose-free universe and a life which simply
ends.

FWIW (probably not much!), I think death really is
the end.

Good.

Occam's razor is a much less forgiving tool than
the proponents of new theisms walking cloaked in
pretenses of science would prefer it to be.

I hope the news that Occam's razor indicates that
embedded creatures are not living in a simulation
will travel widely - and will reach all those
creatures in future alife simulations who really
/are/ living inside simulations.

So you defend your pretense that we _are_ in a
simulation _now_, by your speculation that at some
indefinite point in the future, some species
somewhere in some meta-universe may be capable of
such a feat? That would be a falsifiable hypothesis,
exactly how, once more?

That was supposed to prove what, once again, beyond
your obvious willingness to continue intellectually
dishonest arguing?

I'm sure they will be delighted to learn of the
genuine and original nature of their simulated
universe.

I'd be delighted if you could remove your faith
based blindness long enough to see your current
behavior as it appears to others not caught in the
same delusional state as you are.

But I hope for more than I am likely to encounter.

xanthian.


.

Relevant Pages

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