51–60 of 184 posts
Chris Langan (IQ of 195) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan "Chris Langan is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID), a body that actually promotes ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID). His God is the god who created the world and his ‘proof’ is that the universe behaves like a mind, therefore this must be the mind of a god. Langan may be reputedly the most intelligent…
A few thoughts. 1. Sean is leaving CalTech at the end of next year. It's not a huge surprise, given his interests, that he is pursuing the issues in the philosophy of mind that intersect with quantum physics. Most work in this area is unadulterated quackery, and he is one of the few physicists who understands philosophy well enough to not make me cringe. 2. Most physicists implicitly engage in ontological metaphysics…
As in everyone thought he was crazy until everyone realized he wasn’t. Why go with general consensus now when general consensus was wrong from the start?
Downvotes of course. Y’all do realize that the consensus of physics at one point was that the earth was flat right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But is there infinite regress -- does it have a representation of itself representing itself. I find a more prosaic version of this question quite interesting too. If you can feel a touch/heat anywhere on or in your body its represented in the brain somehow, somewhere. For a moment (i) imagine the brain is sensitive to touch (it isn't because lack of 'pain' receptors) (ii) that the representation of a sensitive part…
To respond to your edit, I don't quite understand what you're getting at. It's quite well understood how the brain represents touch - all the sensory neurons in your skin send information to a brain region which maintains a spacial representation of your body. Your brain isn't sensitive to touch because it's inside your skull, so that touch information wouldn't do a whole lot for you. There's no reason in principal a…
Personally, it amazes me how many people find it difficult to believe or accept, that human consciousness would just be an emergent property of how neural cells function and are connected together. That all of human consciousness would reside on a higher level than the laws of molecular physics and chemistry. That consciousness emerges from the level of cell biology. No need to postulate anything supernatural, or any…
There's a mystery in these questions, and I think that's well accepted. I've heard this "emergent property" explanation before but it seems kind of a handwavey way of avoiding answering any questions. "It just appears when you have enough neurons" is probably true but how?!
Personally, it amazes me how many people find it difficult to believe or accept, that human consciousness would just be an emergent property of how neural cells function and are connected together. That all of human consciousness would reside on a higher level than the laws of molecular physics and chemistry. That consciousness emerges from the level of cell biology. No need to postulate anything supernatural, or any…
I don't find it that difficult, in fact yours is just as much of a belief as the one of the people you subtly criticize. You believe that the standard model and gravity (or whatever unknown theory that can have some experimental evidence to generalize both) are enough to model the behavior of human beings/animal as an "emergent" phenomena, even though there is no direct evidence for that. Even worse actually, there i…
Chris Langan (IQ of 195) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan "Chris Langan is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID), a body that actually promotes ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID). His God is the god who created the world and his ‘proof’ is that the universe behaves like a mind, therefore this must be the mind of a god. Langan may be reputedly the most intelligent…
IQ has never been linked to intelligence, considered there is no agreed upon definition for intelligence.
IQ is the best measure we have to compare how fast your brain stores and processes information compared to others.
Here's my attempt at a tldr. 1. The laws of physics at the time scales, space scales, and energies of the human brain are "known" and we have deep reasons to believe that more will not be discovered. He spends a great deal of space explaining and arguing that the credence that physics is "complete" in this regime should be very, very high. 2. Given the current laws of physics, there is no place or room for non-physic…
How does free will play into this? If the world is run by all physical laws, then I had no choice typing this out and submitting it, rather then closing the tab right now. My "decision" isn't real. If it is an actual conscious choice, that was not calculatable by the exact state prior, then consciousness is fundamental.
That is unless there is some sort of actual absolute meaning to the universe, which is a very boring and treacherous line of reasoning that i won't entertain here
However he existence of an omniscient entity would completely break physics as we know it so any physicalist/rationalist approch to understanding the universe can fairly safely rule it out
Free will may exist as a result of the unknown factors of human consciousness, their actions and consequences and their relations to the physicial world.
Personally I find that thought quite pleasant, because it means that free will does exist from a human perspective, and I happen to posess one of those.
A few thoughts. 1. Sean is leaving CalTech at the end of next year. It's not a huge surprise, given his interests, that he is pursuing the issues in the philosophy of mind that intersect with quantum physics. Most work in this area is unadulterated quackery, and he is one of the few physicists who understands philosophy well enough to not make me cringe. 2. Most physicists implicitly engage in ontological metaphysics…
> 4. I wonder if Carroll's future work in philosophy will cause him to revisit the many-worlds interpretation of QM, which a fair share of philosophers believe carries too much metaphysical baggage. The idea of many worlds "existing" is a philosophical idea; it's not something you learn from studying physics. I think he would argue it carries the least metaphysical baggage as the worlds exist in the equations we have…
But I think it's a tough position, given that relational quantum mechanics also works "out of the box" and doesn't require ontological realism and a deeply speculative metaphysics.
Sean Carroll discusses this with Carlo Rovelli in two separate Mindscape episodes.
There's two classes of people in this world. The ones wishing to believe in nonsense and the others that prefer logic. Consciousness is just a human word that expresses nothing more than a fallacy that attracts people that prefer faith. Similar to quantum mechanics if one is ever capable of understanding superdeterminism. Hilariously the support that exists for the former, reflects the state of society and how humani…
Personally, it amazes me how many people find it difficult to believe or accept, that human consciousness would just be an emergent property of how neural cells function and are connected together. That all of human consciousness would reside on a higher level than the laws of molecular physics and chemistry. That consciousness emerges from the level of cell biology. No need to postulate anything supernatural, or any…