Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 132 posts

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#51

Post by golemotron »

cortesoft wrote: post #27
milesf wrote: post #16

Do you think it's reasonable that conversations like this are fine on HN, but anytime I bring up Christian thought on the matter I am pressured to "not talk religion"? Wrestling with these top shelf Maslow's questions like "why am I/we here?", "what is the meaning of life" and other big life questions are common among all of us. So why the willingness to conjecture that (we live in a simulation | aliens may have seed…

In order for discussion to have any meaning, the things we claim have to be 'falsifiable'; there has to be SOME observable consequence of a claim being either true or false, even if we aren't able to currently observe it. So, for religious discussions, what can we possibly discuss? Take any religious claim, and when we ask 'What observation could you make that would demonstrate to you that the claim is false?', the a…

> So, for religious discussions, what can we possibly discuss? Take any religious claim, and when we ask 'What observation could you make that would demonstrate to you that the claim is false?', the answer is almost always nothing. At that point, what is the use of discussion?

That doesn't stop HN from endlessly discussing string theory, simulation-ism, and singularity. None of them are falsifiable.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#52

Post by projektir »

woofyman wrote: post #46
projektir wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God and simulation to me are fundamentally different, but that may be because I dabbled in religion a lot. The simulation hypothesis, to me, is not terribly surprising or interesting. Why wouldn't someone be able to create a simulation like ours at some point? I am not following why Musk's belief is stupid? Yeah, obviously there's another layer above, and this doesn't explain that much, but I don't understand the stu…

To me, they're the same because both can't be proved or disproved. It's a matter of faith. I find Musk's statement stupid because he just didn't say it's possible. He said it was probable.

That does not make statements the same. That's not what "same" means.

Simulation could be said to be probable. I recall reading a piece of math done on the subject and it seemed a lot more probable than the alternative. Contrary to the God idea, where the probability seems impossible to measure.

This seems like the wrong place to use "stupid", and terms like that mostly exist as a shaming tool rather than for truth exploration, so I tend to be suspicious of anyone using them, especially if they claim to be informed enough to know better than to use them.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#53

Post by whack »

roywiggins wrote: post #7

Both the Intelligent Alien and Simulation ideas just push the question of 'purpose' up a level. Sure, the aliens may have a purpose, but if they are themselves a cosmological purposeless accident then by extension it's arguable that so are we.

By that argument, a human constructed watch is just as purposeless as a random rock lying in a beach. And that argument seems quite a stretch. We're arguing over semantics at this point, but most people would agree that a human-constructed watch does have a specific purpose, more so than a random rock.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#54

Post by ozy »

If compute power is the only thing that matters, we do not live in a simulation. The best computer we can hope to build in the future will only have a minute fraction of the compute power of reality. Simulating reality on that computer will either be a tiny reality, or a much lower fidelity reality.

If you find yourself alive, likely you live where there is the most compute power, therefor, base reality.

Especially since we have zero indicators that any part of our reality is "fake".

Think about a character in the Sims, it would never be able to understand the mechanism by which its arm moves, if it understood its world completely. Because those movements are part of the simulator, not part of the simulated world. Arm movement is not an emergent effect.

Our reality however is based on atoms. Or quantum fields if you want to go deeper. And maybe some kind of cellular automata behind that.

If evolution had a purpose, we can detect an upwards line in complexity, and we must conclude it is unlikely we humans are the end station. Probably we will create self replicating intelligent machines that can colonize space. Emotional meat bags are not very suitable ...

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#55

Post by cortesoft »

golemotron wrote: post #51
cortesoft wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for discussion to have any meaning, the things we claim have to be 'falsifiable'; there has to be SOME observable consequence of a claim being either true or false, even if we aren't able to currently observe it. So, for religious discussions, what can we possibly discuss? Take any religious claim, and when we ask 'What observation could you make that would demonstrate to you that the claim is false?', the a…

> So, for religious discussions, what can we possibly discuss? Take any religious claim, and when we ask 'What observation could you make that would demonstrate to you that the claim is false?', the answer is almost always nothing. At that point, what is the use of discussion? That doesn't stop HN from endlessly discussing string theory, simulation-ism, and singularity. None of them are falsifiable.

All of those things are falsifiable, we just don't yet have the capability to conduct the experiments that could possibly falsify them.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#56

Post by projektir »

socmag wrote: post #48
projektir wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that the genome is not getting to be truly selfish here, rather, it's just a tool of evolution, and evolution as a whole is the one with the purpose, but I don't know if it has enough forward-vision to create a specific entity as much as go for higher complexity whether it's through one complex being or a complex network of simple beings. There's a lot of odd downvoting in this thread...

"Evolution" is a man made term for "The Genome is trying to create a better entity than itself" I think with regard to humans it is well on its way to manifesting itself with that purpose... It's called" The sum total of the Internet". Not sure I agree with its choices, but compared to an individual there is quite a large organism at large there, for better or worse, and that thing is just as potent and self protecti…

Funny, for all the claims that evolution has been defeated, humans act very much like everything under evolution has acted since it got started.

And those genomes that want to make a better version of themselves seem to just follow what evolution wants them to do to this day. Without evolution, and the precursor to it (Big Bang if you will) the genomes wouldn't exist to begin with. It is not from their own cause that they came to exist.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#57

Post by placebo »

projektir wrote: post #32
phkahler wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this article points out that these other notions are equivalent to saying god made it. It's OK for elon musk to think we are a simulation created by someone, but not on to say "religion". I found Musk's idea equally stupid for that very reason. May as well say the universe is on a turtles back. But what's that turtle standing on? It's turtles all the way down.

God and simulation to me are fundamentally different, but that may be because I dabbled in religion a lot. The simulation hypothesis, to me, is not terribly surprising or interesting. Why wouldn't someone be able to create a simulation like ours at some point? I am not following why Musk's belief is stupid? Yeah, obviously there's another layer above, and this doesn't explain that much, but I don't understand the stu…

>The simulation hypothesis, to me, is not terribly surprising or interesting

Well, it might not be interesting in terms of answering what I consider to be the truly fundamental questions (the answers for which I'd also argue are outside the realm of thought), but it definitely is interesting in terms of what can be accomplished or understood within the realm of thought, just as many other things are.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#58

Post by woofyman »

projektir wrote: post #52
woofyman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, they're the same because both can't be proved or disproved. It's a matter of faith. I find Musk's statement stupid because he just didn't say it's possible. He said it was probable.

That does not make statements the same. That's not what "same" means. Simulation could be said to be probable. I recall reading a piece of math done on the subject and it seemed a lot more probable than the alternative. Contrary to the God idea, where the probability seems impossible to measure. This seems like the wrong place to use "stupid", and terms like that mostly exist as a shaming tool rather than for truth e…

You really believe it's probable that we live in a simulation based on a math paper? That math paper is itself simulated as is your reading and understanding of it.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#59

Post by socmag »

posterboy wrote: post #47
socmag wrote: post #25

Well duh. Yes I realize that comment seems "trite" What is it that the genome is doing. Look around and see how it is expressing itself. I'm not a huge fan of Dawkins recently after he went a bit nuts on the whole atheism thing. Not because of the atheism thing but because it distracted him from what he was really about. The genome is expressing itself, and it is way more than selfish. That thing is regression analys…

>That thing is regression analysis to a large power. Constantly calculating minimal cost to self preservation and better versions of itself Edited: That doesn't sound very articulate, hence doubtful. Your interpretation is just that, recognizing already known patterns. Does that relate to the evolutionary "purpose" from the title? The implicit idea of order ("better") is largely based on the temporal succession of wh…

Exist to exist?

I'm certainly not saying that.

The point of existence is to create something more coherent.

Fields form particles, particles form atoms, atoms form molecules, molecules form cells, cells form beings, beings form collectives, collectives form unions.

Look to history on that one.

Like you said, it is nothing new, just a fact.

Currently it seems the Genome has rather large ambitions than "meat". It needs a transitional jump to future existence.

To me it looks like it is doing that pretty damn well.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#60

Post by woofyman »

cortesoft wrote: post #55
golemotron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, for religious discussions, what can we possibly discuss? Take any religious claim, and when we ask 'What observation could you make that would demonstrate to you that the claim is false?', the answer is almost always nothing. At that point, what is the use of discussion? That doesn't stop HN from endlessly discussing string theory, simulation-ism, and singularity. None of them are falsifiable.

All of those things are falsifiable, we just don't yet have the capability to conduct the experiments that could possibly falsify them.

You're going to use simulated experiments to prove or disprove we're in a simulation? Based on our simulated understanding of the physical laws of our simulated universe?
Post reply on HN