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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 1:37 pm
(January 7, 2015 at 1:35 pm)Heywood Wrote: (January 7, 2015 at 1:13 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Can you give an example of of an evolutionary system that came into existence WITH intellect that wasn't based on the observation of the pre-existing evolutionary system?
The game "Chinese Whispers" is an example of an evolutionary system created by intellects which was not based on the observation of the pre-existing evolutionary system.
Wrong, it is a game mimicking what actually happens when people try to relay information orally without error. The game is sometimes called Gossip for just that reason.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 1:44 pm
(January 6, 2015 at 9:24 pm)Heywood Wrote: (January 6, 2015 at 9:19 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Just to note though with regard to your marble example. It's highly optomistic. The world is a great deal messier than that. Chances are that you'd have no way of knowing even that all of the marbles had to be either black or white. There's a world of color possibilities out there.
The bag will contain marbles of the same color or it will not. The truthfulness of the proposition that the bag contains only marbles of the same color is not impacted by the number of color possibilities.
The probability of the bag being filled with all white marbles is established by the filling technique and the color characteristics of the population of marbles from which it was filled. You sequentially extracting marbles and observing their color has absolutely no bearing on this probability.
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 1:45 pm
Remove the human beings, and the game still runs. In fact, it is running, all around us...all the time. Intellect is not a requirement. When -we- do it, we -call it- chinese whispers.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Science through testing and falsification and independent peer review. Outside that media in calling something "news" is that which gets independent conformation and does not offer opinion in reporting.
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 2:05 pm
(This post was last modified: January 7, 2015 at 2:10 pm by JuliaL.)
Rhythm Wrote:-Our brains didn't evolve to seek truth.
(January 7, 2015 at 12:59 pm)Heywood Wrote: (January 6, 2015 at 9:34 pm)ManMachine Wrote: My favourite quote of the last 12 months.
MM
There is a lot of truth to his claim. Evolution rewards behavior....not truth. It doesn't matter why the gazelle runs from a lion and survives to reproduce. The gazelles genes get passed on if it ran away from the lion because it "thought" the lion was playing a chasing game or if it ran away from the lion because it "thought" the lion would try to eat it.
Wha? Seeking truth is exactly what evolution winnows out of variability.
Truth being defined as an accurate ability to predict the future. That's why
we got frontal lobes: to create models to predict future events and guide
current behavior to align our best interests with them. Now
finding Truth, well, that's a different matter.
I don't hold with the true means 'in accordance with the actual state of
affairs ' definition because it fails to consider the accessibility of reality or
the asynchronous confusion as to our concept of ' now' given the lag
between information impinging on our senses and the processing time
involved before it is presented to self.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? 
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 2:33 pm
(This post was last modified: January 7, 2015 at 2:34 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 7, 2015 at 2:05 pm)JuliaL Wrote: Wha? Seeking truth is exactly what evolution winnows out of variability.
Truth being defined as an accurate ability to predict the future. That's why
we got frontal lobes: to create models to predict future events and guide
current behavior to align our best interests with them. Now
finding Truth, well, that's a different matter. We're not very good at predicting the future. Your brain evolved to seek dinner, not truth - or truth defined as "ability to predict the future". Obviously, it's alot more complicated and this is just a catchy phrase...however.....
Quote:I don't hold with the true means 'in accordance with the actual state of
affairs ' definition because it fails to consider the accessibility of reality or
the asynchronous confusion as to our concept of 'now' given the lag
between information impinging on our senses and the processing time
involved before it is presented to self.
IOW, you don't think brains are very good at seeking truth -for a variety of reasons-. Neither do I.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 3:07 pm
(January 7, 2015 at 2:33 pm)Rhythm Wrote: We're not very good at predicting the future. Your brain evolved to seek dinner, not truth - or truth defined as "ability to predict the future". Obviously, it's alot more complicated and this is just a catchy phrase...however..... I've no real argument with you there. But we have been good enough at predicting the future to get this far even if it was only by predicting where to find lunch. How far we're going to get from here is an open question.
Quote:[quote]
IOW, you don't think brains are very good at seeking truth -for a variety of reasons-. Neither do I.
Certainly not the capital T Truths that certain self serving scumbags pretend to know. Too bad knowing that you probably can't know is so intellectually challenging that great numbers of folk will never even suspect. They're not equipped.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 5:03 pm
(January 6, 2015 at 8:58 pm)Heywood Wrote: Consider the following.
Suppose you have a bag of marbles. The bag may contain only marbles colored white or it may not. You do not know. What is the probability that the bag contains only white marbles. You don't know, so lets say the probability the bag only contains white marbles is X.
Suppose you draw a marble from the bag and it is white. The result of this draw doesn't tell you the probability of X, but you do learn something from it. You learn the probability of X is closer to 1 than you previously thought. Why? Because each time you draw a marble and find it to be white, you decrease the number of ways a non white marble could be in the bag.
For example, suppose the bag has 3 marbles in it. W stands for a white marble. B stands for a non-white(black) marble. If 3 marbles are in the bag the possible starting conditions are:
WWW (3 white marbles)
WWB (2 white marbles and black marble)
WBB (1 white marbles and 2 black marbles)
BBB (3 black marbles)
Before we start drawing marbles the probability that all the marbles are white is .25. Now suppose we draw a white marble. Now only two marbles are left in the bag and we've eliminated one possible initial starting condition. The remaining possible starting conditions are:
WWW
WWB
WBB.
We now know that the probability all the marbles are white is .33. Suppose we draw another white marble. The remaining possible starting conditions are:
WWW
WWB
We now know that the probability all the marbles are white is .5. Do you see what is going on here? Every time you observe a white marble while never observing a non-white marble confidence in the proposition that all the marbles are white increases.
It is essentially this thinking that we use to determine what is a fact or at least likely to be true of reality and what isn't.
Isn't this a classic Monty Hall problem? I'm not smart enough to figure that out. 
Change the white and black marbles with a goat and a car.
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 6:52 pm
(This post was last modified: January 7, 2015 at 6:54 pm by 100 Years of Solitude.)
(January 6, 2015 at 8:58 pm)Heywood Wrote: Consider the following.
Suppose you have a bag of marbles. The bag may contain only marbles colored white or it may not. You do not know. What is the probability that the bag contains only white marbles. You don't know, so lets say the probability the bag only contains white marbles is X.
Suppose you draw a marble from the bag and it is white. The result of this draw doesn't tell you the probability of X, but you do learn something from it. You learn the probability of X is closer to 1 than you previously thought. Why? Because each time you draw a marble and find it to be white, you decrease the number of ways a non white marble could be in the bag.
For example, suppose the bag has 3 marbles in it. W stands for a white marble. B stands for a non-white(black) marble. If 3 marbles are in the bag the possible starting conditions are:
WWW (3 white marbles)
WWB (2 white marbles and black marble)
WBB (1 white marbles and 2 black marbles)
BBB (3 black marbles)
Before we start drawing marbles the probability that all the marbles are white is .25. Now suppose we draw a white marble. Now only two marbles are left in the bag and we've eliminated one possible initial starting condition. The remaining possible starting conditions are:
WWW
WWB
WBB.
We now know that the probability all the marbles are white is .33. Suppose we draw another white marble. The remaining possible starting conditions are:
WWW
WWB
We now know that the probability all the marbles are white is .5. Do you see what is going on here? Every time you observe a white marble while never observing a non-white marble confidence in the proposition that all the marbles are white increases.
It is essentially this thinking that we use to determine what is a fact or at least likely to be true of reality and what isn't.
You are admitting that the probability of taking any of the 2 coins is the same ( you are going by the classic definition of probability from Laplace) which might not happen(example: the probability of taking a white coin is 99% while the other 1% or we simply don't know the probability of taking any of the two coins), you are assuming they are equal in terms of probability but ok let's ignore that.
Still the reasoning is flawed.
BWW is different than WBB because you are taking the coins in sucession and not the 3 at once, therefore it acounts for another case.
The probability subject is very trick because most of it is of theory and requires multiple conditions to happen in order to take place in reality.
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RE: How we determine facts.
January 7, 2015 at 10:55 pm
(This post was last modified: January 7, 2015 at 10:56 pm by Heywood.)
(January 7, 2015 at 1:44 pm)Cato Wrote: (January 6, 2015 at 9:24 pm)Heywood Wrote: The bag will contain marbles of the same color or it will not. The truthfulness of the proposition that the bag contains only marbles of the same color is not impacted by the number of color possibilities.
The probability of the bag being filled with all white marbles is established by the filling technique and the color characteristics of the population of marbles from which it was filled. You sequentially extracting marbles and observing their color has absolutely no bearing on this probability.
You do not understand what probability is.
Probability is not some established fact. The bag was either filled with all white marbles or it was not. The composition of the bag is a fact....and it happens to be unknown to us.
Probability is an estimate of how likely one particular set of circumstances has occurred or will occur. Because it is an estimate, it changes as available information changes. Each time you draw a marble from the bag, you obtain new information about the composition of the bag. This new information allows you to revise your estimate.
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