531–540 of 604 posts
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You brought up Christians, not me. Was it meant as a serious claim, or just casual bigotry?
Err yes I did bring it up and it was a serious claim. I'm not sure what your problem with it is tbh.
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Does excitatory/inhibitory map cleanly on to the higher level abstractions? I'm no neuroscientist, so maybe it does, but that seems like a bad assumption to me because in digital logic "active when low" is extremely common. A spurious-suppression system that caused inhibition when low would be perfectly reasonable and compatible with the observation that excitation caused an increase in spurious behavior.
They don't really map well. The brain obviously operates on more continuous principles rather than binary states. The relationship between excitation/inhibition and emergent effects may be more direct and graded in biological neural networks vs to the "active when low". Buuuutt stiilll, 5-HT2A receptor and its downstream effects on glutamate transmission play a central role in mediating the subjective effects of psyc…
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>No.. not everyone, including you, before this comment. It's interesting how you deny that classical equations really hold true yet you will comment on what I actually believe. >You asked for experiments that do not produce the same results, and I gave you several examples. What I really meant was experiments that do not follow the laws we have so far discovered about nature. In the classical realm, that means experi…
> it means a histogram that is not in line with the expected probability (assuming n is large enough) Oh I see so you deny the idea that carrying out the same quantum experiment could result in a very unlikely outcome. > Ok. But there is no classical effect where quantum randomness is observed. c > I made that assumption because you called science a religion (which I still disagree about). I did not. I said science i…
No. Did you read what you quoted? Specifically "(assuming n is large enough)". I am talking about the aggregate result of multiple experiments. Perhaps " if you can run an experiment that produces an unexpected histogram" should say "run a set of experiments" or something like that. Although this should be clear because you cannot make a histogram with one sample.
>c
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>I did not. I said science is based on religious beliefs about the underlying nature of reality. Namely that it is constant and follows laws.
You said "science is ultimately a religious enterprise." Its hard to read that any other way. But even giving you the benefit of the doubt, it just shows why I took issue with your initial comment. What you have said here vs. the initial comment is drastically different, even if you really meant the same thing (which I am not fully convinced of).
>Well science originally was a belief that the universe was like an automaton, following predictable laws deterministically.
What do you mean by "science was a belief?" That was a conclusion many early physicists made, but that doesn't say anything about science itself. It is not either accurate to say that science is a belief that there is quantum randomness. That is a scientific theory or you can perhaps call it a scientific belief, but that belief is not science itslef.
>which is what the comment I replied to insinuated.
It didn't. It is referring to effective determinism, ie. that classical phenomena are very weakly affect by quantum randomness, such that we can rely on it to replicate those effects.
>You seem to have correctly given up on this, but still express a belief
I never held this position and have tried to explain that to you twice already: 'You can just add "extreme likelihood of following this equation" to every classical equation.'
'What I really meant was experiments that do not follow the laws we have so far discovered about nature. In the classical realm, that means experiments that do not produce the same results. In the quantum world, it means a histogram that is not in line with the expected probability (assuming n is large enough). Nobody had mentioned quantum randomness at that point so there was no need to mention it. '
>It really depends on what you mean by 'operates'. Potassium/Sodium ions are fundamental to brain workings.
It doesn't. Sodium potassium gates are well understood and do not rely on quantum randomness.
>You literally said the laws of physics don't change.
That is because I am operating withing the world of positive statements beyond axioms. Within your proposed world of however I would clarify that my promise to go to get something to eat is only in the event that the laws of physics don't change (which we can accept as possible since we cannot accept anything as true at all within your world. In fact I suppose even that statement allowed for to much as it implied that I think the laws of physics currently exist at all for that to change).
>However, you constantly make the positive statement that the universe does follow laws. Again, a religious statement.
It is not a certain statement, just a likely one.
>But if I did that you would still be thinking your scientific belief system is based on reason, instead of religious.
Under your definition of religious, reason and religion are not mutually exclusive. I actually challenge you to define reason here.
>That's correct. Positive statements require a belief system that will inevitably contain axiomatic laws.
But you said that we "take an irreligious look at things and try to keep focus on just what we observe." Yet that itself requires a positive statement that my observations are real. And if we take an irreligious look at things under your definition then we will arrive at zero conclusions.
Reminder to my point from above: "Please cite one physics journal where this claim [that scientists now claim that while the universe is not fully predictable, its macro phenomena can be described with certainty] is made. No physicist will say that quantum randomness cannot possibly have an effect on the macro scale. The claim is that it is extremely unlikely to do so, just like it is extremely unlikely that my hot cup of water will get hotter in a cold room."
Sorry even your consciousness existence is very hard to prove. I know sort of mine existed. But how do I know yours. The Wittgenstein private language and beetle box (something you and you can see but no others) issue is always with us.
When the computer of enterprise or Data … it is a hard call.
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I think some people think science rejects mystical explanations because science is rigid and stubborn and has it's head buried in the sand. But no, it's because there's no proof. If we had evidence that something mystical was happening then it would be a huge breakthrough and it would eventually become science.
And that would not be me, because at no point did I say we needed a 'mystical' explanation. I'm just pointing out the universe is not always predictable, but -- just as it did many years ago -- this often causes a lot of distress, especially on pop science forums.
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well the brain is special because it gives rise to consciousness. lungs, kidneys and heart don't
We don't know that either. We may be a collection of interacting consciousnesses arising from different organs that all pass around the baton called "I".
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"Actually simulated" is such an oxymoron. So which is it? Is the consciousness actual, simulated, or actually simulated? And does the resulting state of mind change the universe, or merely reveal its hidden structure? It's easy to get lost in these unsolvable paradoxes when you try reducing all of creation down to logic. Problem is, logic is not all of creation. Consciousness requires a soul. Otherwise you're confuse…
> Consciousness requires a soul Any actual evidence for this is welcome.
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If a chatbot obtained from an emulation of a human brain behaves in a human-like manner, and is attributed consciousness and self-awareness, good luck arguing that its consciousness is like that of a dog. …and even if you succeed, abusing a dog in the way we abuse ML-based products would not be acceptable in any developed country.
If we abuse a dog we have no way to restore it to its previous state. With computer programs we have a perfect time machine, so any thing that one may call "horrible" can be done and then undone without any moral consequences. This btw also is the answer to the question of evil in religion, god can do whatever he wants without being evil, because it is effectively all in his imagination, and for the people living in…
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> If an animal demonstrated genuine human-level intelligence, such that it was obvious to all and no one could deny it, I think the clear majority of people would be willing to extend human-level rights to that animal. You're probably right. Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales, or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings keep enslaved in 2024. Maybe AI just needs its own Short Circuit 2 s…
> Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales, That’s because the claim that whales possess human-level intelligence is controversial and unproven. You can’t have a conversation with a whale. While whale language has a certain complexity, we don’t know whether it is capable of conveying the kind of abstract conceptual ideas which human language can. > or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings k…