While it can be fun to attack old books, I think it is also important to bitch slap si fi woo as well. There are people who rightfully reject the old stuff but want to treat a energy wave as having the same ability of cognition by itself without the same structure as a living human being. Basically it is simply replacing the religious watchmaker argument with a Star Trek version where that giant cognition is a huge computer programmer instead of a god. Yes energy can and does get to a level of producing material and yes, after we die our atoms and energy will go onto other things.

But to think after we are gone "we" meaning our cognition will, is absurd. It would be like assuming if you pumped gas out of a nozzle it would suddenly become the entire car. Some idiots I think take the idea of artificial intelligence, the ability for computers to think and learn, means that we are in a giant computer lab ourselves? Men In Black nor Star Trek are anymore science than a holy book. There is no "watchmaker", be it the cognition of your old god claims, nor are we in a giant computer with some giant guy, limited in power writing a computer program to produce us. It is simply a a new version of the old watchmaker argument.

This is merely an unthinking weather pattern in which energy collected to the point of being macro which allowed our cognition as an outcome. A wave by itself cannot act like the entire in tact structure we call human cognition. We are not in a giant computer we are not the products of binary code like a program. Anymore than DNA was manufactured by desert god.

You need to chill out and accept the fact that other people have larger and more elastic intellects which can both encompass, and draw profitable exercise and enjoyment, from ideas and concepts which evidently stretch your brittle mind to the point of painful rupture.

If you were to have the capacity for attaining power, I think you would be a sloganeering, enforcer of rigid ideological orthodoxy, and book burner.

(March 18, 2015 at 3:53 pm)Chuck Wrote: You need to chill out and accept the fact that other people have larger intellects which can both encompass, and draw profitable enjoyment, from ideas and concept which evidently stretch your brittle mind to the point of painful rupture.

If you were to have the capacity for attaining power, you would undoubtedly be a sloganeering, ideological enforcer and book burner.

Oh are you one of those who thinks we are magical computer code in a giant lab with a nerd on a computer programming us into existence?

A watchmaker argument is the same no matter who is doing it. If the old cognitions of gods of antiquity don't fit in as answers please explain to me why we should expect to find out we are code in a giant computer lab?

Do you know what the word "anthropomorphism" means?

I can profitably exercise my brain and interest using scenarios which contains implausibilities. I don't give a rat's ass such implausibilities might offend you. In fact I would dismiss you particularly completely because your mind is so brittlely shaped around ideological orthodoxy that other's enjoyments of implausibilities offends your narrow minded preachy ass.

(March 18, 2015 at 4:09 pm)Chuck Wrote: I can profitably exercise my brain and interest using scenarios which contains implausibilities. I don't give a rat's ass such implausibilities might offend you. In fact I would dismiss you particularly completely because your mind is so brittlely shaped around ideological orthodoxy that other's enjoyments of implausibilities offends your narrow minded preachy ass.

No, same stupid accusation of "you are so closed minded" when all I am saying is "don't gap fill". Yes improbabilities are allowed by QM, but just like the rest of science, it also has rules even at that level.

Stephen Hawking, "A god is not required". Now if that kind of concept of a cognition to him is not required to explain all this, then tell me why any type of cognition would explain all this? A bigger si fi cognition instead of a god is just as unlikely.

Waves by themselves cannot think like an in tact human. Even computers have to have a macro level when in tact even if the algorithms are allowed as simulations as part of the program. There is still a bigger structure that has to be certain arrangement.

So if you want to go there, this "programmer" would have to be even bigger than humans and the universe and more complex, then that program would have to be even bigger and more complex and that programmer would have to have an even bigger more complex programmer and so on and so on and so on. It would be the same fatal problem standard god claims suffer from. "Infinite regress".

When science as far as time being a matter of perspective and claims that we are more like a Nickelodeon and our perception of the "arrow" is only one aspect of time. That is freaky enough by itself without planting a bigger human like figure into it. "Programmer" or "god" it is still falsely projecting human qualities on non human events.

Straw man much?

(March 18, 2015 at 4:45 pm)Chuck Wrote: Straw man much?

Make you a deal, I'll treat you like I do any theist, conduct your "Cosmic Bill Gates theory of all this" get it peer reviewed, and confirmed, get it to the patent office, collect your Nobel prize in science.

Otherwise maybe you need to consider those words those scientists use you are twisting to fit what you want to see into it.

Just like "law" is twisted by theists to mean there must be a god who made those laws.

The top scientists use metaphor to give laypersons an idea of something, when they use those words they are not saying that so you can take them literally just to stick bullshit into what they are actually saying.

There is enough disagreement of where QM will go at the top level, they don't need laypersons adding to that. They are already having a hard enough time they don't need the general public twisting what they say.

The simulation hypothesis isn't totally wacked.

Why the Probability that You Are Living in a Matrix is Quite High

Quote:Now we get to the core of the simulation argument. This does not purport to demonstrate that you are in a simulation. Instead, it shows that we should accept as true at least one of the following three propositions:

(1) The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small

(2) Almost no technologically mature civilisations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours

(3) You are almost certainly in a simulation.

I don't really see the difference between this and the (unsolvable) solipsism arguments. Even if you knew you were a brain in a vat (computer) you wouldn't know if that vat wasn't a simulation running on another computer somewhere. (Why do people only go one level down in these arguments anyway?)

My brain gets stuck a couple of recursions down from there and I give up caring.
But I am still looking for incongruencies just in case my life really is just a good video game and finding that fact out is the victory condition.

Again, straw man much?

I said nothing about scientists, QM, or any theory. What I said was I dismiss you based on your preachy and narrow minded doctrinarian view of what fiction ought and ought not to postulate as starting point for scenarios or stories.

(March 18, 2015 at 10:17 pm)Chuck Wrote: Again, straw man much?

I said nothing about scientists, QM, or any theory. What I said was I dismiss you based on your preachy and narrow minded doctrinarian view of what fiction ought and ought not to postulate as starting point for scenarios or stories.

Persistent yes, "preachy" no.

Scientific method is a tool, not a religion. Even ethical scientists challenge each other, if they are not, then they are not good scientists.

You jumped in on me in this thread because I equated si fi woo to religious woo. It is the same gap filling laypeople do either way.

Now as far as me, I suck at science, but I do listen to the experts and over the years understand that none of what I don't understand is a licence for me to gap fill. I do know that things that are considered universal knowledge in science are widely accepted and that which is not yet confirmed but working on those people will tell you not to jump the gun.

Neil Degrees Tyson long before his new series cosmos, had a lecture which may still be on Youtube somewhere.

He went through the history of scientists back to antiquity. Far too many would hit a wall and stop and go "god did it" only to have a future scientist explain what they were trying to get past in natural terms. Even in his COSMOS series he constantly reminds us it is ok to give up on bad claims.

I do know that things that are considered universal knowledge in science are widely accepted and that which is not yet confirmed but working on those people will tell you not to jump the gun.

My point is that if you reject rightfully the god Thor being required to explain lightening, that god would have to be conscious to cause that lightening. So if you rightfully reject that idea, and I hope you do, why would we need a computer programmer cognition to cause all this either?

Einstein is a common scientists the theists love to twist. He never believed in a personal god or a human like cosmic entity at all. He was using the word "god" as metaphor for the vastness and power of nature itself.

Si fi fans do the same thing. A scientist will say "we know how to "teleport" photons, and they jump in with Star Trek gap answers which is not what scientists mean by that in reality.

Now if I am being semantic "technically" about "all this" being caused by a cognition bigger than us, "technically" I don't know, but the likelyhood of this being a product of a program in probability terms are so fleetingly unlikely it is not worth dwelling on.

God or product of a cosmic Bill gates, if you don't want to call it a god, in which we are the software and program it still doesn't square with what we know today.

Whatever QM figures out to me, will only give us a better understanding of the bigger picture. I don't think a programmer or god will be needed to fill in that gap.

Stephen Hawking, "A god is not required", so why would any type of cognition be needed to cause all this either?