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Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

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Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#71

Post by borlanco »

vasco wrote: post #48
mingus88 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there is a nice crossover also in religion, where some sects have agreed that theories like the Big Bang are not incompatible with a creator. But my initial take on Godel’s belief here is that even if he is correct, and the order of the universe demands that there is more to existence than this, why do Humans get the afterlife? Parameciums don’t have the inherent consciousness or great individual potential, so t…

Humans are "special" in the sense that at least in genesis god creates humans in his own image: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." More simply, if you're creating a moral system that values human life…

> You tell them they are special, and definitely not like animals, and you hold them to a higher standard.

And the important part comes right after this. What happens when you hold them to a higher standard? People then choose to accept or reject the standard, and they live according to their (personal) choice.

If some people accept the higher standard and live by it, they prove that they are special, definitely not like animals. That is free will: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#72

Post by hirvi74 »

layer8 wrote: post #34

> The idea that everything in the world has meaning is, by the way, the exact analogue of the principle that everything has a cause on which the whole of science is based.’ Gödel – just like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom he idolised – believed that everything in the world has a reason for its being so and not otherwise. This is the core mistake, I believe, to assume that causation implies meaning, instead of causat…

> This is the core mistake, I believe, to assume that causation implies meaning, instead of causation just being a logical correlation, and meaning being a construction of the human mind.

I agree with you. If anything, saying everything having a reason seem to me like applying human interpretation to Determinism.

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#73

Post by snakesonapppp »

imiric wrote: post #51

> His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this: > If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it? Far from my petty mind to challenge a great thinker lik…

[dead]

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#74

Post by 7thaccount »

nprateem wrote: post #50
7thaccount wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does your second paragraph even mean? I don't mean to come across as disrespectful btw. I just honestly don't understand what you're trying to convey.

It means there's a meditation that is supposed to provide direct spiritual realisation. As this involved a transformation of consciousness, it was known as alchemy - change. However, historically the instructions were kept secret and shared using coded language. All that philosophers stone business, changing lead into gold etc. But they were just symbols which basically refer to sexual energy and consciousness. Here'…

I read the Wikipedia article on this and it seems to suggest meditation can lead miracles like telekinesis:

"Hearing this, I mentally repeated the mantra, I noticed that my breathing was getting heavier. Suddenly, I felt a great impact of a rising force within me. The intensity of this rising kundalini force was so tremendous that my body lifted up a little and fell flat into the aisle; my eyeglasses flew off. As I lay there with my eyes closed, I could see a continuous fountain of dazzling white lights erupting within me"

Although I respect meditation and the religious beliefs of all, I don't believe any of this is possible. I don't know if an afterlife exists, but find it telling that nothing paranormal has ever been recorded in a verifiable manner.

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#75

Post by anonzzzies »

mistermann wrote: post #52
anonzzzies wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But my initial take on Godel’s belief here is that even if he is correct, He was/is correct about many things, but not about the afterlife. It's just because some people are so lucky to see the face of god by deep and hard mental studies, they believe there is such a thing. And if you have been told all your life that is reality and you 'saw' it, why question it?

> He was/is correct about many things, but not about the afterlife. What method did you use to objectively determine whether there is an afterlife, in a manner that is impossible to be incorrect? > And if you have been told all your life that is reality and you 'saw' it, why question it? You arrived at this extremely popular yet epistemically unsound "fact" entirely independently did you?

> entirely independently did you?

And you? Your past comments show you are religious and as such there is no point of replying with much else than this.

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#76

Post by ren_engineer »

mingus88 wrote: post #38
anonzzzies wrote: post #15

Math people seem to have this more than other engineering/science etc ; math, and this is actual bloody Godel, seems so perfect and beautiful that is has to have a creator. Everything else is incredibly sloppy (including most software).

Yeah there is a nice crossover also in religion, where some sects have agreed that theories like the Big Bang are not incompatible with a creator. But my initial take on Godel’s belief here is that even if he is correct, and the order of the universe demands that there is more to existence than this, why do Humans get the afterlife? Parameciums don’t have the inherent consciousness or great individual potential, so t…

>Yeah there is a nice crossover also in religion, where some sects have agreed that theories like the Big Bang are not incompatible with a creator.

The "Big Bang" theory was literally created by a Catholic priest, the name was coined by an atheist physicist mocking it because it aligned too much with the Bible for his taste

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#77

Post by jarek83 »

What if all our existence, it has a meaning, but it's not what we hope it is. We exist to develop as evolution becoming more complex, is also evidently more energy 'consuming', or actually to hint the following question, dispersing.

What if the only reason we exist is... what if we are just a tool for... entropy?

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#78

Post by danans »

cushpush wrote: post #67
Xcelerate wrote: post #3

Funny this came up. Just today I was reading about a letter Gödel wrote to von Neumann in 1956 asking him about an idea relating to the precursors of P vs NP and Hutter search ( https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/46ae... ). Gödel was quite ahead of his time. Even though he tended to prefer theory over practical applications, it would be really interesting to have his thoughts on prediction and in…

Reflecting deeply on Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, I'd like to contribute to the discussion. The essence of Completeness lies in the notion that a system, constructed on foundational axioms (such as facts, truths, or mathematical operations), encompasses all possible facts derivable within its framework. Interestingly, this completeness paradoxically begets contradictions. It implies the existence…

> This ultimate truth transcends individual systems, offering a broader, more holistic understanding.

But the unknowability of that so-called "ultimate truth" implies that it's not offering anything, much less any understanding.

The article says Gödel thought that escape hatch for these contradictions is death, because all the local consistency and rationality hints at some greater consistency that must be there. However, that sounds a lot like wishful thinking.

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#79

Post by varjag »

I wonder what Gödel would have thought of Wolfram's opinion on physics. According to that the reality is a kind of superposition of all possible combinations among all possible abstract mathematical concepts to which we have only very restricted, macroscopic insight. That makes mathematics objective and primary structure of the Universe and feeds right in the rationality canon.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...

Re: Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

#80

Post by miles »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #13
fsckboy wrote: post #4

TLDR Godel believed we lived in a rational world. "Precisely in virtue of the fact that our lives consist in unfulfilled or spoiled potential makes him confident that this lifetime is but a staging ground for things to come. But, again, that is only if the world is rationally structured."

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/real-3

That comic could just as easily have displayed these 3 quotes instead:

Einstein: "I believe in Spinoza's God." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_vi...

Schrödinger: "Consciousness, by its very nature, exists only in the singular. I would like to say: the total number of all 'consciousnesses' is always just 'one'." https://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger

Gödel: "God must exist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_ontological_proof

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