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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

#111

Post by mensetmanusman »

ren_engineer wrote: post #76
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…

>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

Yeah, atheists were shocked the visible universe had a beginning at the time.

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

#112

Post by mensetmanusman »

nprateem wrote: post #42
aragonite wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Maxwell was so impressed by the perfect similarity of the hydrogen molecules he concluded that they must have been created! > No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. > None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have…

They never thought of infinite multiverses with random variations in each, and survivor bias.

Having to invent an infinite amount of complexity to solve the conundrum of existence is certainly one way to gloss over things :)

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

#113

Post by gumballindie »

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…

> I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI.

He’d probably think what rational people think - it’s software and has no intelligence, no purpose, no meaning on its own.

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

#114

Post by mensetmanusman »

javajosh wrote: post #32

I rather like to believe that the universe is infinite[1], and that the laws of physics change imperceptibly across long distances, meaning that our observable part has properties that helped life, and intelligent life, evolve[2]. There does seem to be a compelling negentropic "urge" present at almost every level of physical reality, that complexity accretes over time in a manner that almost seems designed[3]. This i…

The fun thing about infinite is that it means there are an infinite number of planets with you in it typing exactly this post.

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

#115

Post by lostmsu »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #109
j7ake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor logic here. Listing examples of apparent order in universe does not prove that the universe is rational.

If you believe logic and rationality exist, and you believe that you are part of the universe, then the universe is rational, because you are the universe being rational.

Then I propose that you are shit because just before you pooped shit is part of you.

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

#116

Post by joquarky »

Anyone interested in this subject may be interested in a recently published book:

"Notes on Complexity" by Neil Theise

A good chunk of the book goes into details on Gödel's interests in metaphysics (including this topic).

The book is generally a rational exploration of ideas that cross-cut metaphysics, spirituality, and science, and it goes into dialog and correspondence among some deep thinkers in science and philosophy in the past century or so.

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

#117

Post by Tainnor »

cushpush wrote: post #101
danans wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How…

Your insights on the inherent contradictions in rational frameworks, especially in the context of Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, bring us to an intriguing crossroads. Initially, Gödel’s Completeness Theorem suggests that within a certain logical system, all truths can be proven. However, his subsequent Incompleteness Theorem introduces a profound paradox: there are truths which, though existent wit…

You're constructing a paradox where none exists. The completeness and the incompleteness theorems don't contradict each other, they are about fundamentally different things (and it's really a shame we use the same terminology, because so many people are confused by it).

> there are truths which, though existent within the system, cannot be proven by it

This isn't what the first incompleteness theorem shows - rather, it shows that such "truths" don't exist within the system in the first place (in other words, there are some models in which a certain statement is true and others in which it is false - at least for first-order logic). Otherwise, this would indeed contradict the completeness theorem, but it doesn't.

I don't want to stop you from making your own metaphysical conclusions, but I'm not sure they're actually supported by the theorems themselves.

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

#118

Post by namaria »

kevindamm wrote: post #53
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…

> I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. Instead bound by substrate and power grid that are both inefficient and minimally redundant. I'd wager more on the meat sacks.

Systems that can reproduce themselves are way more likely to endure than systems that need to be held together from the outside. In 5000 years I think it's more likely that there will be people than that there will be machines.

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

#119

Post by namaria »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #107
nprateem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never thought of infinite multiverses with random variations in each, and survivor bias.

But this really just kicks the can down the road doesn't it? It's still an attempt to resolve a "why" question with a "how" answer. a fancier way of saying it's turtles all the way down.

Yes, multiverse, big bang, creationism, are all just a "beyond this point we're not sure but I like to extend the lines thusly" claim.

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

#120

Post by Tainnor »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #99
defrost wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the distinctive properties of integers is that there are at least 200 of them. Oh, and some of them (either nearly or exactly half) are negative. The table of elements falls a little short here.

> Oh, and some of them (either nearly or exactly half) are negative. Well, it doesn't quite work that way. Yes, you can put the negative integers in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers, but you can also put them in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers that are divisible by 2, or 3, or 3,000... or, for that matter, the negative integers that are divisible by three thousand. All of those sets have th…

There is a sense in which the even integers can be considered "half" of all the integers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_density

"Counting stuff" can be generalised to infinite sets in different ways: cardinality is one (arguably the most common) of them, but natural density or measure are others.

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