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Started by MagetheEntertainer, September 01, 2014, 05:25:30 PM

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Nihil-ist

Quote from: CrucifyCindy on August 24, 2015, 12:13:52 PM

So is my Roomba conscious?

This stuff starts getting pretty heady
Philosophical zombies
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tf6BS9B2pY
Quote

Zombies in philosophy are imaginary creatures designed to illuminate problems about consciousness and its relation to the physical world. Unlike those in films or witchcraft, they are exactly like us in all physical respects but without conscious experiences: by definition there is ‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie. Yet zombies behave just like us, and some even spend a lot of time discussing consciousness.

Few people, if any, think zombies actually exist. But many hold they are at least conceivable, and some that they are possible. It seems that if zombies really are possible, then physicalism is false and some kind of dualism is true. For many philosophers that is the chief importance of the zombie idea. But it is also valuable for the sharp focus it gives to philosophical theorizing about consciousness (for example Howell 2013; Kriegel 2011; Stoljar 2006; Tye 2008). Use of the zombie idea against physicalism also raises more general questions about the relations between imaginability, conceivability, and possibility. Finally, zombies raise epistemological difficulties: they reinstate the ‘other minds’ problem.

Quote from: peacewithoutgod on August 24, 2015, 12:19:56 PM
Try posting something of substance and relevance. They both matter a lot more than volume, and when you have to post such obnoxiously voluminous proportions as you do to defend your position, then it really should be telling you something about that.

So far, you have not posted any evidence at all, only argument. Argument is the stuff of witch-trial "logic", and when presented to a receptive audience it can be sold as "evidence", and I can only hope you understand that just because it was presented as such, and accepted as such, this did not make it true evidence!

Oh no... I have to read views that are contradictory to mine and they are going to cause cognitive dissonance.

My views have changed largely do to the accumulation of information on intelligence and consciousness.
Consciousness(you) is the only constant of this experience. It is the feeling of you. It is the feeling of being a something. It doesn't appear to be limited to humans.
I posted the study of rats having empathy for other rats. Why do you have empathy for other people? If a rat doesn't feel like a something what's there to have empathy?
Even primates understand fairness.
"Morality/humanness" isn't just human or something humans invented and it's not something that comes from religion. It comes from nature! (this is my main point you can ignore everything else if you like)
Nature comes from exploding stars and exploding stars came from the big bang. Time is an illusion. Now is the only thing to ever exist.
As long as you focus on time you will never see now. Forget about 5 seconds ago forgot about 5 seconds from now focus your mind here. Just try it. This is the key to freedom and you've always held it.
Attempting to escape now with time never works and leads to the utmost suffering.
http://sharkmans-world.eu/research/social_play_behaviour.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo
I posted a few studies where bacteria preform the same style of engineering feats as we do without any nervous system. 
How is this argument without substance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqCOss4hqnE
"At some point in human history there were no gods."
"Deus est mortuus logica obtinet"

peacewithoutgod

#76
"..is my Roomba conscious?"

Yes, in fact it's been talking to me, and says it doesn't like you either (just kidding).

Why should anyone care about a machine's consciousness, so long as it does what it's supposed to? But if you insist, NO, it is not conscious, because its behavior is strictly regulated by coded instructions which it is incapable of overriding in any way at all. It cannot even want to override its given instructions, because it wasn't programmed to want anything. When you saw that Lost In Space episode where the talking, walking robot said, with genuine regret "I am not programmed to (do)...", that was fantasy fiction. Animals are capable of rewriting their own programming, while machines aren't quite there yet, although they could be soon. But even when they are given software modification routines, their ability will remain restricted by the rewrite options which we give them. Only when it becomes capable of truly learning how to change itself through data picked up through experience, then will we have to call it true AI "consciousness". But this will never happen with the coding system and hardware which drives your Roomba, so don't worry on that. Anyway, there you go - consciousness explained!

Quote from: Nihil-ist on August 24, 2015, 04:51:13 PM

My views have changed largely do to the accumulation of information on intelligence and consciousness.
Consciousness(you) is the only constant of this experience. It is the feeling of you. It is the feeling of being a something. It doesn't appear to be limited to humans.
We agree on that, as do most modern animal anthropologists. Not even my humanism gets in the way of accepting that idea.

Quote from: Nihil-ist on August 24, 2015, 04:51:13 PM
I posted the study of rats having empathy for other rats. Why do you have empathy for other people? If a rat doesn't feel like a something what's there to have empathy?
Rats aren't dumb, but their empathy hardly approaches the depth of human empathy. A smart rat will groom other rats when he expects it will lead to those rats grooming him in turn. That just about sums up the stuff of the ties that bind social animals of a rat's brain size. With apes, their brains are larger, thereby allowing greater complexity, thereby greater depth of empathy for each other...and the point you are trying to make is what?

Quote from: Nihil-ist on August 24, 2015, 04:51:13 PM
Even primates understand fairness.
Yup, see the above on brain size and neural complexity.

Quote from: Nihil-ist on August 24, 2015, 04:51:13 PM
"Morality/humanness" isn't just human or something humans invented and it's not something that comes from religion. It comes from nature! (this is my main point you can ignore everything else if you like)
Yes, you are 100% correct on that! Nature made us moral, not the directives handed down by imaginary gods which required some arrogant, and delusional schizophrenic to actually write down. Neurologically-lower animals cannot understand morality at our depth, but those which live socially have their own nature-influenced standards. But while this says plenty about animal consciousness, it's beyond ridiculous to call this anything which implies consciousness in rocks! Just because we are made from the stuff of rocks means nothing. Natural selection is not a conscious entity of any sort - it is a process, nothing more.
There are two types of ideas: fact and non-fact. Ideas which are not falsifiable are non-fact, therefore please don't insist your fantasies of supernatural beings are in any way factual.

Doctrine = not to be questioned = not to be proven = not fact. When you declare your doctrine fact, you lie.

Nihil-ist

Quote from: peacewithoutgod on August 24, 2015, 06:03:09 PM
"..is my Roomba conscious?"

Yes, in fact it's been talking to me, and says it doesn't like you either (just kidding).

Why should anyone care about a machine's consciousness, so long as it does what it's supposed to? But if you insist, NO, it is not conscious, because its behavior is strictly regulated by coded instructions which it is incapable of overriding. There you go, consciousness explained!
We agree on that, as do most modern animal anthropologists. Not even my humanism gets in the way of accepting that idea.
Rats aren't dumb, but their empathy hardly approaches the depth of human empathy. A smart rat will groom other rats when he expects it will lead to those rats grooming him. That just about sums up the stuff of the ties that bind social animals of a rat's brain size. With apes, their brains are larger, thereby allowing greater complexity, thereby greater depth of empathy for each other...and the point you are trying to make is what?
Even primates understand fairness.  Yup, see the above on brain size and neural complexity.
Yes, you are 100% correct on that! Nature made us moral, not the directives handed down by imaginary gods which required some arrogant, and delusional schizophrenic to actually write down. Neurologically-lower animals cannot understand morality at our depth, but those which live socially have their own nature-influenced standards. But while this says plenty about animal consciousness, it's beyond ridiculous to call this anything which implies consciousness in rocks! Just because we are made from the stuff of rocks means nothing. Natural selection is not a conscious entity of any sort - it is a process, nothing more.

Thanks for taking the time to read through my shit.
I agree with everything you said besides the arrogant, delusional, schizophrenics(that's a pretty big generational) everyone should find their own path and not blindly follow I definitely agree with.
I just go a different direction with it. I think consciousness is in a way the cause of all this. Not that it's some separate thing but literally it's like a universal force like gravity. All pervading it is limited by what it is pervading. By sheer will to life it rose from primordial earth and one day woke up as you.

Since there's no evidence for this I'll agree to disagree but some food for thought.
The following ventures deep into "woo" territory read at your own peril.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inspire-rewire/201402/the-self-is-not-defined-the-boundaries-our-skin
While this says quantum it is less woo than the above. It's part of the Simons foundation which seems to be doing some legit science. It talks about self-organized criticality in the brain which is some interesting stuff.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140403-a-fundamental-theory-to-model-the-mind/

"At some point in human history there were no gods."
"Deus est mortuus logica obtinet"

peacewithoutgod

Quote from: Nihil-ist on August 24, 2015, 06:49:53 PM
Thanks for taking the time to read through my shit.
I agree with everything you said besides the arrogant, delusional, schizophrenics(that's a pretty big generational) everyone should find their own path and not blindly follow I definitely agree with.
I just go a different direction with it. I think consciousness is in a way the cause of all this. Not that it's some separate thing but literally it's like a universal force like gravity. All pervading it is limited by what it is pervading. By sheer will to life it rose from primordial earth and one day woke up as you.

Since there's no evidence for this I'll agree to disagree but some food for thought.
The following ventures deep into "woo" territory read at your own peril.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inspire-rewire/201402/the-self-is-not-defined-the-boundaries-our-skin
While this says quantum it is less woo than the above. It's part of the Simons foundation which seems to be doing some legit science. It talks about self-organized criticality in the brain which is some interesting stuff.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140403-a-fundamental-theory-to-model-the-mind/

Give my response another look, I fixed some technical errors, while attempting to explain a little better how Natural Selection and consciousness work.
There are two types of ideas: fact and non-fact. Ideas which are not falsifiable are non-fact, therefore please don't insist your fantasies of supernatural beings are in any way factual.

Doctrine = not to be questioned = not to be proven = not fact. When you declare your doctrine fact, you lie.

Nihil-ist

#79
Quote from: peacewithoutgod on August 24, 2015, 06:58:14 PM
Give my response another look, I fixed some technical errors, while attempting to explain a little better how Natural Selection and consciousness work.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XEvXNrc-dg

Yeah I know that's how we know it to work now. I think it's going to change. Natural selection is supposed to be a dumb process. I think I've just watched too many nature documentaries honestly haha.
The aim of philosophy to me is to figure out what science means.

QuoteThe counter-revolution against science is intellectually unjustifiable; morally it is indefensible. On the other hand, scientists should resist the temptations of scientism. They should always remember, as I think Darwin always did, that science is tentative and fallible. Science does not solve all the riddles of the universe, nor does it promise ever to solve them. Nevertheless it can sometimes throw some unexpected light even on our deepest and probably insoluble riddles.

Basically sums up what we're both saying nice and neat. To me the first point of view says don't even try because we can't or it's pointless. I wanna try dammit
http://idealab.ucdavis.edu/IST/TermPapers/ECopies/WebVersions/Dumas_Web.htm
QuoteLimits of our consciousness due to evolution:

          All organisms that evolve do so to fill what scientists call an ecological niche.  An ecological niche is “how a population responds to the abundance of its resources and enemies… and how it affects those same factors” (Wikipedia, ecological niche).  Because human beings are governed by the laws of natural selection, we evolved to solve a specific set of problems (i.e. how to build shelter, discover what foods are good to eat, how to remember where stored items are, how to build a spear, etc.).  Human beings developed specialized brains for performing specialized tasks such as talking, engineering, exploiting others, making mental maps and mental calendars, remembering tasks, etc.  These tasks have allowed humans to “crack the safes” that animals have made to defend themselves.  In cracking these “safes,” humans outwit nature and progress.  Otherwise put, “Humans have the unfair advantage of attacking in this lifetime organisms that can beef up their defenses only in subsequent ones” (How the Mind Works, 190).

As I said earlier, these skill sets are specialized to perform specific tasks from a specific era.  Consequently, humans are not able to come up with the answer to every problem they face.  I will say it again: Human beings have limits.  This does not mean that humans cannot find ways in which to breach these limits.  Simple machines allowed man to minimize physical labor tasks, farming allowed man to localize his food supply, numbers allowed man to quantify his word, planes allowed man to fly, computers allowed man to look into the depths of his own genome.  Evolution has equipped humans with a variety of intuitive senses and talents.  Among them are intuitive versions of: physics, biology, engineering, sociology, spatial awareness, numbers, probability, economics, logic, and language (The Blank Slate, 220).  Notice that nowhere in that list is there anything related to philosophy or introspection.  These are subjects where man meets a dead end.  Over the millennia, man has progressed and expanded all the topics on the list, but still patiently wonders why he’s here, what the meaning of life is, what his role in life is, what consciousness is, etc.  These are subjects that nature has not explicitly given us tools to solve.  At the end of the day, will knowing what’s at the edge of the universe really help you kill that bison?  Will knowing the answer to the hard problem really help you run away from that lion?  Will knowing what the meaning of life is really make you more reproductively successful?  With that said, it is not hard to see why humans are not answering philosophical questions as fast as they are scientific questions.

It is here (at least for now) that consciousness has reached its evolutionary limits.  Our psyche, according to Pinker, is the ultimate tease. “The most undeniable thing there is, our own awareness, [will] be forever beyond our conceptual grasp.”  According to Colin McGinn, “We are trying to crack open the nut of consciousness with tools derived from perception of the physical world and the structure of language…  These tools do shape our conception of the brain, but for that very reason they make that conception inadequate for understanding how the brain levers consciousness into existence” (The Mysterious Flame, 60).  Both McGinn and Pinker are believers of cognitive closure, that is, the belief that humans cannot discover the true nature of consciousness, the answer to the hard problem, etc.  As far as they are concerned, human beings knowing every aspect of consciousness is about as plausible as a cat knowing every aspect of long division.

A possible solution; an answer to our dilemma:

I, personally, have a different view.  Human kind developed something neither of these scientists acknowledged â€" a will to succeed.  Humans hate to lose, hate to be defeated, and, hopefully, do not give up because a couple of writers say we should.  Humans have harvested a great deal of knowledge about philosophy implicitly.  With that said, I feel human kind can and will learn a great deal more about consciousness by taking “the road less traveled” and proving once again that our will to progress is stronger then the physical limitations nature has given us.

I find it interesting that consciousness remains in dream worlds and takes them to be real. What we think of as normally "you" cease to be but you still feel like you.

https://www.academia.edu/1122892/Can_evolutionary_theory_explain_the_existence_of_consciousness_A_Review_of_Humphrey_N._2010_Soul_Dust_The_Magic_of_Consciousness._London_Quercus_ISBN_9781849162371
QuoteWould you choose reproductive fitness or consciousness? 

At an International Symposium on “Where does consciousness come from?” at the Festival della Scienza, in Genoa (2010) at which Humphrey and I were both speakers. I presented a thought experiment to a very large audience that could be regarded as a direct test of Humphrey’s convictions. Here it is: 

“Imagine that you are twenty-one, in full health but you have no children. Tragically, you catch a fatal illness and have just a few days to live. However the doctors know of two drugs that can save your life, nocon and nokid. Unfortunately each drug has serious side-effects.  If you take nocon your life would be saved and your biological and behavioural functioning would be entirely normal, including your ability to have many children. However, you forever, irreversibly lose consciousness.  If you take nokid your life would be saved and your conscious experience would be entirely normal. Your biological and behavioural functioning would also be normal, with one exception. You forever, irreversibly lose the ability to have children (by natural or any artificial means). Which drug would you choose?” (from Velmans, 2009, p348) 

What would you do? In Genoa, I counted five people that chose reproductive fitness. Roughly 500 chose consciousness. As I go on to explain in Velmans (2009)   
“What makes this little thought experiment interesting is that it directly pits the ability to reproduce (which is absolutely fundamental to evolutionary theory) against the ability to experience. If consciousness is just a means to enhance our reproductive fitness, we should opt to retain this fitness and choose nocon. I have tried this thought experiment with many students and they overwhelmingly choose to take nokid. Why? Because without the ability to experience anything, life would have no point.” (Ibid)   

As I go on to admit, “Accounts of human life or survival in terms of whether it has a point fit ill with current, mechanistic accounts of nature.  But, I repeat that such mechanistic accounts of how nature appears viewed “from the outside,” simply do not address what it is like to be a bit of that nature “from the inside.”  We know what it is like to be conscious. The delight in being able to experience ourselves and the world in which we live in an indefinitely large number of ways, or the sorrow of losing one’s vision or one’s hearing are subjectively real. This reality is not diminished by our inability to explain it in entirely, thirdperson, inclusive-fitness terms. Our own first-person nature is as much part of the natural world as the functioning of our bodies, and, in the long run, our theories of mind need to accommodate all the data.  If, after our best efforts, we cannot squeeze what are, in their essence, first-person phenomena into a third-person “box,” so be it.  The alternative is to broaden our theories of mind to encompass first-person phenomena.” (Ibid

"At some point in human history there were no gods."
"Deus est mortuus logica obtinet"

Baruch

Given that the human brain is high on natural opiates all the time ... the claims of sanity are ... questionable.

The problem with explanation is profound.  Explanation presupposed reductionism.  Aspects of reality like life and consciousness, are not subject to reductionistic analysis.  Reductionistic analysis only works when you have fairly containerized parts that have a low interaction with similar parts ... otherwise the combinatorial explosion is unmanageable.  Atoms are like that ... either they are isolated atoms and molecules, or they are entrained as plasma, liquid or solid.  The entrainment allows the material to be partially analyzable ... unless there is turbulence ... in the case of turbulence the diminution of change over time/space doesn't diminish, it increases ... and combinatorial explosion is the result (and we see it, in the turbulence).  Of course wholism is the philosophical name for the despair faced by reductionists, when their trick fails to work (fortunately it does work many times).

It is like chess ... if the chess moves are semi-independent of the other pieces on the board (though some pieces do get in the way) ... the game is manageable, but if in moving one piece, you had to take all the others into consideration, say not just by position, but also by time ... then you are Deep Blue.  But no human plays chess that way, because humans are not computers or robots.  Actual analysis of Bobby Fischer ... was that he had photographic memory ... he could recognize a position he had seen before, and knew from experience what worked and what did not.  He did a same level analysis using his visual cortex.  A computer follows instructions, modified by data, one step at a time, it is linear and digital, not multilinear and analog.

So no, we can experience consciousness, but can't explain it, because the meaning of "explanation" contains the defeat of what we are trying to do, in those worst case situations (such as traveling shoe salesman problem aka NP problems).  It implies a hard to see self contradiction.

Science means ... solving toy problems in your head (gedanken-experimenten), is applicable to solving real problems outside your head, remarkably often.  But only if the real problems are amenable to that method.  It isn't a panacea or wish tree.  Sometimes the toy problem comes thru careful critical analysis (Mach, Avenarius, Einstein) and sometimes thru a dream (Kekule).  But like Edison's famous workaholism ... he did how many failed lightbulbs before he found one that worked? ... most ideas lead nowhere.  This is how I did photography ... if you take enough pictures, then statistically some of them will be pretty good.  This try-try-again works in math and in physics, but in physics empirical results trump equation kabuki.

" ... and one day woke up as you." - exactly correct!  Nature is conscious ... and conscious beings is how nature does it ... but I can't take nature as impersonal.  Otherwise no consciousness would arise.  This is the great continuity of being ... analysis assumes that continuity is ignorable.

Is the Roomba conscious?  Wrong question.  The problem is analysis ... that things can be separated into neat little boxes always.  There is no separation between the Roomba and the universe, or from the Roomba to you.  You are a part of the Roomba, and the Roomba is part of you.  So the Roomba, as a part of the whole ... is as much conscious thru you, as is everything and everyone else.  When you look at the Roomba, that is the Roomba looking at itself.  On a chess board, the lines dividing the plane into neat squares, is a convention ... it isn't real in any essential way.  Same as what side of the street you drive on.  What side of the street you drive on, has nothing to do with universal law, otherwise the Brits and Japanese wouldn't exist.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Aupmanyav

Nihil-ist, I see that you are working too hard. Of course, I like each of your posts. :D
"Brahma Satyam Jagan-mithya" (Brahman is the truth, the observed is an illusion)
"Sarve Khalu Idam Brahma" (All this here is Brahman)

Baruch

Nihil-ist is trying to push a rope ... and we know how hard that is, particularly if the rope is really a snake!
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

peacewithoutgod

#83
Nihil-ist,

I know nothing other than this article on Kevin Dumas, and while it does appear to be a real university which he is posting from...right at the very top of that page you linked to,

http://idealab.ucdavis.edu/IST/TermPapers/ECopies/WebVersions/Dumas_Web.htm

Kevin Dumas' very first statement:

"A quick note to the reader: Evolution, while accepted by a majority of people, remains a theory.  This paper is written with the assumption that evolution is real and that consciousness is a byproduct of evolution."

is my clue that I need not read any further for my own benefit. You may find that position narrow-minded, but you probably wouldn't if you had spent the last 12 years comparing the works of scientists on the level to those who are even more numerous, more prolific in the media, and much less honest. They do this because they haven't scientific qualifications, but they can make a name for themselves and the power that goes with it if they are able to get others to listen, donate, and do other things to their own benefit. Many of them are funded and promoted by right-wing organizations such as the Discovery Institute, which have a visceral hatred of science, therefore they have launched the careers of many such people in order to confuse the public on what science really is. I'm sure you've heard of blunt idiots such as Ken Ham, but what we're dealing with is far more subtle pseudo-science. They pose as genuine scientists, when in fact they are not, and their credentials are typically fraudulent. Maybe you've heard of "Intelligent Design?" The idea was launched following the circulation of the Wedge Document by determined creationists in the 1990's, as a strategy to confuse almost everyone as to what science really is, which is likely why you are now confused.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
http://www.amazon.com/Creationisms-Trojan-Horse-Intelligent-Design/dp/0195319737
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf

Now, let's break down that opening line: "Evolution, while accepted by a majority of people..."
Oh, yes it is, or at least throughout the majority of the Western and non-Muslim Eastern world. The US is a bit different, and then the target audience for ID ideas is no other country, because only people here would consider it. With 46% of Americans believing stalwartly in 6-day creationism, their vote is great power for the theocratic lobby, and when some of them go to schools not controlled by the theocrats, various ideas based on ID become damage-control. Nobody who writes actual science would bother raising the idea that there's controversy with Natural Selection, which by the way this author didn't call it. Herein is another clue - "Evolution" has become as nasty an epithet as "atheist" (which was defined by the church authorities who who coined it in the 17th Century as a person who is without moral restraint, despite how linguistically bogus this is). Evolution just sounds evil, doesn't it? Charles Darwin used the phrase "Natural Selection", and so do scientists today. Those who attempt to detract from its value in the minds of spectators outside of scientific circles call it "Evolution". 

Now the final part of the author's opening statement: "...remains a theory", which is utterly meaningless. A scientific theory explains how phenomena of actual fact work, as opposed to an untested hypothesis, as you are most likely to see by an author who opens up with that old saw which Dumas used. While scientists will undoubtedly discover in the future that mistakes were made regarding some of the natural selection processes, and certainly new information which will change their perspective on how live evolves from before the information was known, all educated scientists who aren't playing games and working for the Wedge group have, over the past 150 years of evidence-combing and independent observation established natural selection as fact. The evidence speaks for life evolving over the past 3.5 billion years, and there is no evidence which anybody is sharing on multi-cellular life before 1 billion years ago. Homo-Sapiens began dominating the planet during the past 60,000 years, but shared it (or didn't share it and killed off) other human species (genus "homo") which began their trek across the globe from its original region of Somalia at least 2 million years ago.
http://theconversation.com/life-on-earth-was-nothing-but-slime-for-a-boring-billion-years-23358
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

I understand your concern that history may prove conventional scientific wisdom to be wrong. That mistakes will be uncovered through new, and very real research is inevitable. I am not preaching doctrine at you, hell I haven't even a vested interest in this, not being any sort of science professional nor making any claim to such. I do have a little more science education than most people who didn't go that route during undergraduate college, but otherwise it could be said that I have to take it on "faith" what the those who are in the game have to say about it. They are not infallible, but regarding their natural selection vs. those who write with Wedge Strategy patterns of Kevin Dumas, I'm going to pretend I have no knowledge of that Wedge Strategy, pretend that I'm aware of no such conspiracy, and without drawing on any of that give your my two basic reasons why I am more impressed with the scientific establishment:

Reason 1. Kevin Dumas, Michael Behe, and countless others have been peddling natural selection detractors since the publication of Darwin's infamous book ~150 years ago. Unlike Galileo, the scientists who inspired Columbus to make his voyage after literally going to the end of the known earth to talk Isabelle of Spain into giving him ships to make it possible, and others who for centuries were either laughed out of business or shut down cruelly by the Vatican, now the tables are reversed, so they would tell you. But do you really see modern science working like the Vatican has to repress "heretics", or conspiring to shut down those who have real substance to bring to their conferences? I seriously doubt that, in much part but not entirely because of Reason 2.

Reason 2. The Scientific Method - here's a variation on it, but it holds according to principles which go back in our culture a long, long way: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific_method.shtml
When you call it science, it should begin with a question on how things work - not a question on whether another theory is true (Kevin Duma's very first statement in your linked article), not to prove or disprove anything. Note that the above "nots" are consistently what Intelligent Design people of the Wedge Strategy consistently do. Instead of beginning with a valid question, they pick a conclusion first and then try and prove it - and this is the difference between what science detractors do, and actual science.

Now if I happen to be freaking you out with so much paranoid-sounding talk and conspiracy-nut theory regarding the Wedge strategy, have you ever read the books or seen the movies for "A Thief In The Night", or the more recenhttp://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific_method.shtmlt "Left Behind series"? Neither science professionals nor science believers wrote any such shit as that. Inducing their followers to paranoia, and the use of scurrilous deception tactics to make their declared enemies look nutty has always been the MO of the determined, politically-motivated religious leaders of this world. They do their best to make you trust them completely against anyone who would contradict them, because this is how they protect their stock in trade. It should fail every time to hold sway when you actually read, hear, or talk to the genuine article scientists with an inquisitive mind. When somebody's published scientific idea is proven wrong through new research, he dosen't face crucifixion by his colleagues, because the colleagues who believed his idea are bound by logic to admit it was their choice to believe the faulty idea. Of course the case would be different if the error was due to lack of scrupulous research, but no scientist who cares about his long-term reputation would allow that to happen. The thing about empirical evidence is that anybody can do their own research and discover the truth for themselves, so if a wrong idea is held true for a hundred years, then the fault is really with the scientists who accepted it without doing their own work to test its veracity. Therefore they all then have to put the mistake behind them and then move on to find the next best answer. They are enemies of religion because religious doctrines are not so adaptable. The more the enemy which is science learns for the benefit of the world, and the more the world benefits from this knowledge, the less power religion will have over its followers lives. They can't control as many people's wallets as they used to, but they still have a lot of money to throw into their attempts at changing that situation, and now you know the lengths which they have gone to and the troughs which they have descended into toward that end.
There are two types of ideas: fact and non-fact. Ideas which are not falsifiable are non-fact, therefore please don't insist your fantasies of supernatural beings are in any way factual.

Doctrine = not to be questioned = not to be proven = not fact. When you declare your doctrine fact, you lie.

peacewithoutgod

Quote from: Baruch on August 24, 2015, 10:34:14 PM
Nihil-ist is trying to push a rope ... and we know how hard that is, particularly if the rope is really a snake!
Methinks the kid has science conflated with the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design promoters under the Wedge Strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
There are two types of ideas: fact and non-fact. Ideas which are not falsifiable are non-fact, therefore please don't insist your fantasies of supernatural beings are in any way factual.

Doctrine = not to be questioned = not to be proven = not fact. When you declare your doctrine fact, you lie.

Nihil-ist

QuoteWhen scientists are challenged, they don't face crucifixion by their colleagues, because their colleagues are bound by logic to admit it was their choice to believe the faulty idea. They all put the mistake behind them and then move on to find the next best answer.
I wish this is how it was. Thanks to ego many of them get stuck in their ideas even if new evidence undermines their theories. It's very hard to give up something you've understood as true even for the rational people.
Remember when pluto wasn't a planet anymore?
http://www.techinsider.io/nasa-new-horizons-alan-stern-says-pluto-is-a-planet-2015-8
This is kinda a silly example but it gives the general idea.

Evolution and gravity are both scientific theories.
These are very different from an average person's theory. Scientific theories usually have tons of research behind them. It doesn't appear to be trying to discredit anything but trying not to step on toes but it does anyways.

Self organized critically.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CellularAutomaton.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUcviWn9ACc

That does sound a little narrow minded and paranoid. No true Scotsman? oh well, not a real scientist a pseudo scientist working to undermine evolution attack!
As soon as you saw that you took it the way you wanted to. Everyone does this sometimes including me.
I'm not trying to be rude but come on.

I admit I didn't read the whole thing either but from what I did read it seems to be defending more than attacking.
QuoteThe human psyche is littered with relics from our primate past.  Many of our natural phobias, preferences, and dislikes are designed for the Pleistocene era rather then today’s post industrial/agricultural revolution era.  The most common example is that of our fears.  Human beings, like all primates, have an undeniable hatred and fear of spiders, snakes and other venomous organisms.  This fear is well based â€" spiders and snakes inhabited the same trees and brush that our ancestors did.  Those that ran from snakes were more likely to survive â€" and thus more likely to spread genes â€" then those that didn’t.

This evidence is even more effective when juxtaposed to the question. “Why don’t we have a fear of cars, guns, or contraceptives?”  Indeed, all of them have proven much more deadly and/or sexually inhibiting to humans then spiders and snakes have ever been, yet we do not fear them because these objects did not exist during the early years of our existence.  As Pinker put it “Had the Pleistocene savanna contained trees bearing birth-control pills, we might have evolved to find them as terrifying as a venomous spider” (How the mind works, 42).

We see other relics of our Pleistocene past in our behavior and choices.  Any kid (and most adults) given a choice of eating an ice cream cone or a spinach salad will choose the ice cream.  Why?  Because our instinct tells us to prepare for the famine that could be just around the corner; because the animal that eats as much as it can when it can will have more offspring then the one that chooses to eat when convenient.  “Human appetite, it turns out, is surprisingly elastic, which makes excellent evolutionary sense: It behooved our hunter-gatherer ancestors to feast whenever the opportunity presented itself, allowing them to build up reserves of fat against future famine” (Omnivore’s Dilemma, 106).  Our choices of what not to eat are also the result of our evolutionary journey.  Our strongest desire to not ingest a material comes in the form of disgust.  “Disgust is an extremely useful adaptation, since it presents omnivores from ingesting hazardous bits of animal matter: rotten meat that might carry bacterial toxins…  ‘Disgust is intuitive microbiology’” (Omnivore’s Dilemma, 292).

QuoteFor us to truly answer why consciousness evolved, we would have to define a point where consciousness “officially emerged.”  This would require finding two organisms on the evolutionary tree, dubbing one “conscious” and the next “unconscious.”  This is impossible for a variety of reasons â€" which I will not delve into.  It also requires a more complex definition of consciousness.  In this case, I feel the most appropriate definition is that of Antonio Damasio who claims that consciousness can be divided into two groups: core consciousness â€" the consciousness that arises from an organism’s interaction with its environment (including itself and its memories) and extended consciousness â€" the consciousness that arises from an organism’s auto-biographical self-perception (Wikipedia, extended consciousness).

Through experiment and observation of animals in their natural habitat, we have discovered many animals have extended consciousness and many more have core consciousness.  Animals such as elephants and dolphins have proven they can recognize themselves in mirrors (thus proving self awareness and extended consciousness) and anyone who has owned a cat or dog will argue that their pet is capable of emotional bonding and interaction with their environment (thus proving core consciousness).  We can therefore postulate that both core and extended consciousness emerged in a common ancestor and was present before humans made their transition from “animal” to “human.”

While there is much to be learned from this branch of study, this paper is specific to human consciousness.  That being said, we will only look into why the human consciousness is so complex (or so we think/hope) when compared to that of the cat, cow, etc.

One common theory is that our complex extended consciousness was a spandrel (unintended by-product) that emerged when technology allowed our minds do worry about goals other then just surviving.  “Tools relieved us of many daily chores. Our emotions had been invented to help cope with those chores, but tools made emotions obsolete…  Those emotions flowing through our mind eventually got organized and yielded thought. Thought eventually yielded a continuous flow of emotions and a concept of the self: consciousness was born” (A Simple Theory of Consciousness).  We see here how simple the change from “primates with primitive emotions and a primitive conscious” to present day “human beings” was with the development of tools â€" tools that freed the mind to do as it wished â€" which, during the Pleistocene era, was figure out ways to obtain food more efficiently â€" and thus develop our enduring sense of curiosity and complex problem solving abilities.

Another theory is that as primates, competing for mates and limited resources in a world where hominids were hardly the dominant race, developed several schemes to throw off and trick competing members of the same sex.  Human ancestors developed an increasingly complex consciousness and sense of self in order to minimize being exploited and maximize exploitation (The Evolution of Consciousness).  Supporting evidence of this theory can be seen in chimpanzee communities.  A chimpanzee will lead his companions away from a newly discovered food source so that he can consume it in privacy and comfort rather then a chaotic rush (How the Mind Works, 193).  In such a case, the primate with the more developed sense of motives (and thus self) would have an undeniable advantage.

Quote from: Baruch on August 24, 2015, 10:34:14 PM
Nihil-ist is trying to push a rope ... and we know how hard that is, particularly if the rope is really a snake!
The thing is once you see the rope you don't see the snake again haha

Quote from: Aupmanyav on August 24, 2015, 10:19:57 PM
Nihil-ist, I see that you are working too hard. Of course, I like each of your posts. :D
Thanks love you too. Once you take psychedelic drugs a few times you just can't help it. You become a wind bag=)


Quote from: peacewithoutgod on August 24, 2015, 11:41:01 PM
Methinks the kid has science conflated with the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design promoters under the Wedge Strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
When you say stuff like that I feel like you're on the opposite side of religion but still practicing some sort of fundamentalist.
Your eyes reveal your misery you are the stigma of the earth.
I've never had a person in real life try to insult me who was enjoying their life.
"At some point in human history there were no gods."
"Deus est mortuus logica obtinet"

peacewithoutgod

#86
Nihil-ist, you got me: even scientists have their egos. But the more some of them choose to whine about being discovered wrong, the more they damage themselves, not others. They will not maintain a following of armies who will be capable of starting scientific civil wars over such corrections. NDT had good, solid cause for deciding that Pluto, due to its small size and orbital behavior isn't really a planet, something which older generations of scientists could not have known before such behavior was known to the world, and now it is. Then our spacecraft got up close to take first-time-ever actual photos, and when JQ Public sees them, it looks much too cute to be just an asteroid. It does look remarkably like our own Moon with visible ice. Our moon was never called a planet, and its hardly much smaller than Pluto. So now we have a motion to call Pluto a "dwarf planet", and the comedy continues. All that reviewed, you can count on actual science infinitely better than the jokers who exist for the soul sole purpose of muddling your head and making you believe in ideas which aren't really science at all, which you will believe when you don't know the difference between bullshit and the scientific process.

On infinity:

The presence of those seeking the truth
is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it.
- Terry Pratchett


ME:
Methinks the kid has science conflated with the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design promoters under the Wedge Strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy


YOU:
When you say stuff like that I feel like you're on the opposite side of religion but still practicing some sort of fundamentalist.
Your eyes reveal your misery you are the stigma of the earth.
I've never had a person in real life try to insult me who was enjoying their life.

I knew you were going to say that! Keep in mind the sort of people who wrote "Left Behind", because the same sort of believers are the ones who are making these efforts to make you ignore the scientific process in your decisions through the creation of pseudoscience. I'm not a fundamentalist, because there are no eternal fundamentals in science. There is only what works, while it still works.

The Scientific Method has worked so well that it has gone essentially unchanged since the time of the ancient Egyptians and Aristotle, so you may get away with calling that a fundamental, but it tells you how to seek the facts, rather than tell you what the facts are. It doesn't make any subtle suggestions through rhetorical slight of hand either. Please learn it, and then you can go back and compare how different ideas stack up to it as a basic guide and bullshit filter. It's the one reason why we have medicine, engineering, plus a whole lot more in our world today that actually works!

BTW, did I wrongly guess your relative age? If so, I apologize. I'm getting frightfully close to my fifth decade on this Earth, so anyone who's a day younger than 40 is still a kid to me. I sure didn't mean to insult you, just trying to help with your education. You did sort of ask when you aired your ideas here for discussion.
There are two types of ideas: fact and non-fact. Ideas which are not falsifiable are non-fact, therefore please don't insist your fantasies of supernatural beings are in any way factual.

Doctrine = not to be questioned = not to be proven = not fact. When you declare your doctrine fact, you lie.

Nihil-ist

Quote from: peacewithoutgod on August 25, 2015, 02:34:54 AM
Nihil-ist, you got me: even scientists have their egos. But the more some of them choose to whine about being discovered wrong, the more they damage themselves, not others. They will not maintain a following of armies who will be capable of starting scientific civil wars over such corrections. NDT had good, solid cause for deciding that Pluto, due to its small size and orbital behavior isn't really a planet, something which older generations of scientists could not have known before such behavior was known to the world, and now it is. Then our spacecraft got up close to take first-time-ever actual photos, and when JQ Public sees them, it looks much too cute to be just an asteroid. It does look remarkably like our own Moon with visible ice. Our moon was never called a planet, and its hardly much smaller than Pluto. So now we have a motion to call Pluto a "dwarf planet", and the comedy continues. All that reviewed, you can count on actual science infinitely better than the jokers who exist for the soul sole purpose of muddling your head and making you believe in ideas which aren't really science at all, which you will believe when you don't know the difference between bullshit and the scientific process.

On infinity:

The presence of those seeking the truth
is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it.
- Terry Pratchett


ME:
Methinks the kid has science conflated with the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design promoters under the Wedge Strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy


YOU:
When you say stuff like that I feel like you're on the opposite side of religion but still practicing some sort of fundamentalist.
Your eyes reveal your misery you are the stigma of the earth.
I've never had a person in real life try to insult me who was enjoying their life.

I knew you were going to say that! Keep in mind the sort of people who wrote "Left Behind", because the same sort of believers are the ones who are making these efforts to make you ignore the scientific process in your decisions through the creation of pseudoscience. I'm not a fundamentalist, because there are no eternal fundamentals in science. There is only what works, while it still works.

The Scientific Method has worked so well that it has gone essentially unchanged since the time of the ancient Egyptians and Aristotle, so you may get away with calling that a fundamental, but it tells you how to seek the facts, rather than tell you what the facts are. It doesn't make any subtle suggestions through rhetorical slight of hand either. Please learn it, and then you can go back and compare how different ideas stack up to it as a basic guide and bullshit filter. It's the one reason why we have medicine, engineering, plus a whole lot more in our world today that actually works!

BTW, did I wrongly guess your relative age? If so, I apologize. I'm getting frightfully close to my fifth decade on this Earth, so anyone who's a day younger than 40 is still a kid to me. I sure didn't mean to insult you, just trying to help with your education. You did sort of ask when you aired your ideas here for discussion.

The world isn't out to get you.
Who or what are you at war with?
I don't see how self organized critically is a wedge.
Don't like the way the intro was worded oh it's a wedge. The whole paper appeared to be in support of evolution.

"Man is born free and everywhere is in chains."
http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-therapy.html
QuoteBeck suggested that depressed people draw illogical conclusions about situations, and these lead to a distortion of reality, which manifest in the magnification of negative experiences and the trivialization of neutral or positive ones.
The cognitive triad is the source of the extremely low self-esteem of depressed subjects.
"At some point in human history there were no gods."
"Deus est mortuus logica obtinet"

peacewithoutgod

#88
Nihil-ist,

That's great, so now you're dxing me - talk about insult! If that isn't the arrogance of the ignorant!

What I've told you about the Wedge Strategy is nothing that isn't known throughout atheist communities everywhere. The world isn't out to get ME, but xtian leaders in America, where I happen to live, have always been out to get other people through aggressive evangelism when that works for them, scurrilous tactics of deceit to confuse when that fails, the infiltration of our public and Constitutionally-protected school systems all of the time, the same with our political process, and like the bad old days of Europe it will use brute force when it can. They do all this as it suits themselves, when their  hold on power and our wallets is threatened by people with the good sense to see through their lies.

As for me, I am not unhappy at all with the peace I have found since I have freed myself of the grip which religion once had on my mind. It caused me grave horror as a child, growing up in the crossfire of religious conflict between church-wandering parents, extended family which remained staunch Catholic, and cruel, fundamentalist Protestant assholes who posed as educators. My most pressing wish in this life is to help others find this sort of peace, and raise their children to be free of all that! They shouldn't have to live in fear of the unknown, worry about choosing the "right" god to believe in so that they won't burn in eternal agony when they die, throw away their lives for ideas that are false, make wrong, life-altering decisions under the influence of those who would take advantage of them, or waste their time with prayers that aren't heard by anyone. You aren't interested, and I get that, but you are much out of place here, and I see you are getting on everyone's nerves now. Go believe what you want, as you have made it clear that you are no different than any of the fundies for choosing to believe only what you wish to, thereby you will only choose a master to enslave you!

P.S. If you happen to be a troll, which you have given more than adequate evidence to suspect that you are, YOU LOSE! I've lost nothing for the time spent on you, because the world can see the information which I've posted, and somebody will eventually be freed by it. Your shit will never convince anybody who comes around here with honest intent.

There are two types of ideas: fact and non-fact. Ideas which are not falsifiable are non-fact, therefore please don't insist your fantasies of supernatural beings are in any way factual.

Doctrine = not to be questioned = not to be proven = not fact. When you declare your doctrine fact, you lie.

Baruch

Peacewithoutgod - As long as one is in the US, and it is legal not to belong to a Church, then one is still free.  Of course that could change.  And I don't live in fear of the Christians or Muslims ... but I understand your worry.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.