by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Sunday June 01, 2003 @04:13AM (#6088682)
I don't see how it's truth would change anything (from your mind's perspective, at least), so I'm not sure why you would find it "too scary." Consciousness built on neurons made of atoms is no more real than consciousness built on simulationed neurons made of simulationed atoms. Consciousness is as consciousness does.
I don't see how it's truth would change anything (from your mind's perspective, at least), so I'm not sure why you would find it "too scary." Consciousness built on neurons made of atoms is no more real than consciousness built on simulationed neurons made of simulationed atoms. Consciousness is as consciousness does.
My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...
What do you expect, it's 5 am and I'm stuck at work!
My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...
I actually had the opportunity to visit Heisenberg during his final days at his home in Munich, 1975. Let me tell you, the place was full of these boxes, taped shut, smelled absolutely awful. Boxes piled up to the ceiling. Hundreds and hundreds of them everywhere! Then there was the ceaseless cacaphony of yowling, and scraping... The entire time, during tea, he just kept muttering to himself about maki
My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...
You've obviously never tried putting a cat inside a cardboard box. Just try tapping the outside and you'll find out pretty quickly whether it is alive or dead...
Cogito ergo sun (I think therefore i am.)
Descartes, ( Born March 1596, died Feb 1650)
This all goes down to the old questions:
Do I really exist?
Does the world around me exists?
Is the world as i percieve it to be?
Descartes tried to answer the first question.
While trying to explain the other two, don't forget that the only proof that you have that the world out there exists comes through your senses. For all you know, there are no other people out there - maybe your senses are being mislead:
by a complex computer simulation
by a powerfull telephatic entity
by a drug
by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream
...
According to Descartes, the only thing you can be sure about is that you exist.
We get to self-existence. Since everything has a cause, there must be a root cause, and this must be God. God, as we all know, created the world, therefore that exists too. And since God is good, he wouldn't lie, therefore the senses must provide an accurate picture.
Thre's a reason everybody stops after Cogito ergo sum, and that's because the rest of the reasoning was a bit, well, dodgy.
I'm sure I've misprepresented it a bit, but Rene can always speak up if he feels slighted. No? Well, then.
IANAPS (not a philosophy student), though I am going to take the intro class next semester, but I have a bit of a question with this - hopefully you can help me out:
Why must everything have a cause? I mean, I can't think of anything that doesn't (except God, I'll get to that) but that doesn't mean such a thing doesn't exist.
Second - if everything must have a cause, but there is a root cause (God) which doesn't have a cause, isn't that a direct contradiction?
Causality is a nasty little thing, and I'm not really well versed in it, but here is something to think about regarding root causes:
Consider truly random events in quantum physics (I believe certain types of particle decay fit into this category, though my understanding of physics isn't what I wish it was). What is the cause of a particle decaying (or not decaying). One could very easily argue that there is no cause.
Of course, one could always argue that since God created the universe, he in some way ca
2. Somethings were uncaused (creation of the universe, God, whatever.)
This isn't really that much of a cop-out. If you leave God out of it and look back to the big bang, it doesn't necessarily make sense for us to look at a cause since the laws of physics (not to mention space and time itself) didn't exist (at least not in any form that we know of) before the big bang. Since we don't know what the laws of physics (if there were any) were surrounding the big bang, asking what caused it may be something
I'm probably going to get lambasted for this, as I'm about to wear my beliefs on my sleeve, but oh well...
God is sort of like a "special case." Whenever there is a flaw in the logic of many types of philosophy, God immediately enters the picture to clear things up =) Much of the philosophy you will read will continually fall into a recursion towards infinity... as many people have pointed out, there is no way to prove that if we are living in a simulation, the next level up (our simulator
Oh, I agree. But that's not the biggest assumption in there: the leap from "there must be a root cause" to "and that root cause is the Judeo-Christian god" is, well, ambitious.
If anyone has Descartes' Discours de la méthode on hand, which is iirc, where he proves God's existence, that part might be interesting to read. It sounds like a complete kludge. Just like when Descartes argues that we are but automata, and then goes on to say that there would be two ways to differentiate automatas from real Men(speech and soul, i believe)...
The Inquisition, or Galileo weren't so long gone when Descartes was alive - maybe he thought he would be b
"For all you know, there are no other people out there - maybe your senses are being mislead:... by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream"
Have you guys seen the movies "Jacob's Ladder" and "Mulholland Dr."? Not recent ones, so spoilers are fine... Both are about dreams of people just moments before they die.
Frankly, it scares me because it implies that not only is afterlife possible, it seems likely...
What's more, as the Hansen essay explored, obtaining that afterlife means attempting to guess the simulation designer's goals, whether they be religious, artistic or whatever.
Maybe I should become a Zoroastrian. Or maybe the designer's goals include creating minds with a Kyoto-school acceptance of the absurd.
"Be there. Aloha."
-- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
woooah (Score:5, Funny)
but either way, i wouldn't believe this because it would be too scary if it were true.
Re:woooah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:woooah (Score:5, Funny)
My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...
What do you expect, it's 5 am and I'm stuck at work!
Re:woooah (Score:1)
Impressive. My mum never quoted Schrödinger to me
Meow. Meow. Meow. (Score:1)
I actually had the opportunity to visit Heisenberg during his final days at his home in Munich, 1975. Let me tell you, the place was full of these boxes, taped shut, smelled absolutely awful. Boxes piled up to the ceiling. Hundreds and hundreds of them everywhere! Then there was the ceaseless cacaphony of yowling, and scraping... The entire time, during tea, he just kept muttering to himself about maki
Re:woooah (Score:2)
You've obviously never tried putting a cat inside a cardboard box. Just try tapping the outside and you'll find out pretty quickly whether it is alive or dead...
Old philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
Descartes, ( Born March 1596, died Feb 1650)
This all goes down to the old questions:
- Do I really exist?
- Does the world around me exists?
- Is the world as i percieve it to be?
Descartes tried to answer the first question.While trying to explain the other two, don't forget that the only proof that you have that the world out there exists comes through your senses. For all you know, there are no other people out there - maybe your senses are being mislead:
- by a complex computer simulation
- by a powerfull telephatic entity
- by a drug
- by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream
- ...
According to Descartes, the only thing you can be sure about is that you exist.Re:Old philosophy (Score:5, Informative)
Descartes tried to answer all three.
We get to self-existence. Since everything has a cause, there must be a root cause, and this must be God. God, as we all know, created the world, therefore that exists too. And since God is good, he wouldn't lie, therefore the senses must provide an accurate picture.
Thre's a reason everybody stops after Cogito ergo sum, and that's because the rest of the reasoning was a bit, well, dodgy.
I'm sure I've misprepresented it a bit, but Rene can always speak up if he feels slighted. No? Well, then.
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
Why must everything have a cause? I mean, I can't think of anything that doesn't (except God, I'll get to that) but that doesn't mean such a thing doesn't exist.
Second - if everything must have a cause, but there is a root cause (God) which doesn't have a cause, isn't that a direct contradiction?
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
Consider truly random events in quantum physics (I believe certain types of particle decay fit into this category, though my understanding of physics isn't what I wish it was). What is the cause of a particle decaying (or not decaying). One could very easily argue that there is no cause.
Of course, one could always argue that since God created the universe, he in some way ca
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
1. Everything has a cause, therefore causation and existance go infinitely back in time
2. Somethings were uncaused (creation of the universe, God, whatever.)
Worse, the second opinion has the feel of a cop-out, so no one likes to settle on it.
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
This isn't really that much of a cop-out. If you leave God out of it and look back to the big bang, it doesn't necessarily make sense for us to look at a cause since the laws of physics (not to mention space and time itself) didn't exist (at least not in any form that we know of) before the big bang. Since we don't know what the laws of physics (if there were any) were surrounding the big bang, asking what caused it may be something
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
I'm probably going to get lambasted for this, as I'm about to wear my beliefs on my sleeve, but oh well...
God is sort of like a "special case." Whenever there is a flaw in the logic of many types of philosophy, God immediately enters the picture to clear things up =) Much of the philosophy you will read will continually fall into a recursion towards infinity... as many people have pointed out, there is no way to prove that if we are living in a simulation, the next level up (our simulator
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
But what if OUR go is the result of a SIM created in a SIM that WE create (sometime in the future)?????
Wouldn't that be perfectly wonerful paradox???
It would certainly solve that whole, "who created god, and his god, and
everything has a cause (Score:1)
This is an assumption. And even if it is true, then you are using logic to justify other things, and personally I just don't buy it all.
Re:everything has a cause (Score:2)
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1, Insightful)
If anyone has Descartes' Discours de la méthode on hand, which is iirc, where he proves God's existence, that part might be interesting to read. It sounds like a complete kludge. Just like when Descartes argues that we are but automata, and then goes on to say that there would be two ways to differentiate automatas from real Men(speech and soul, i believe)...
The Inquisition, or Galileo weren't so long gone when Descartes was alive - maybe he thought he would be b
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
Er...of course you mean "sum".
Re:Old philosophy (Score:2)
Er...of course you mean "sum".
No, cogito ergo sun. I think, therefore I am a huge ball of flaming gas...
Re:Old philosophy (Score:1)
Re:Old philosophy (Score:2)
Yes.
Does the world around me exists?
I hope not. Nothing that weird should be allowed to exist.
Is the world as i percieve it to be?
The general consensus is no, although since it's the concensus of people who don't actually exist then probably the actually answer is yes.
maybe your senses are being mislead:
by a complex computer simulation
No one would waste that much computer power on such a silly simulation.
by a powerfull telephatic entity
With way too much time on its hands
Re:Old philosophy (Score:2)
Have you guys seen the movies "Jacob's Ladder" and "Mulholland Dr."? Not recent ones, so spoilers are fine... Both are about dreams of people just moments before they die.
S
Re:woooah (Score:2)
To quote D. Adams, very deep. Reader's Digest has a column for people like you
consciousness (Score:1)
makes it oh-so-meaningful.
Re:woooah (Score:2)
What's more, as the Hansen essay explored, obtaining that afterlife means attempting to guess the simulation designer's goals, whether they be religious, artistic or whatever.
Maybe I should become a Zoroastrian. Or maybe the designer's goals include creating minds with a Kyoto-school acceptance of the absurd.