“Reality Goes Beyond Physics,” and more

[peacegirl]

Anyway, your BS about light and sight is a thread derailment. Please keep it in your own thread.

You brought it up, not me.

 

[bilby]

Error

This kind of brief summary of a poster's position is something I have long felt that this board could really benefit from.

Well done.

 

[peacegirl]

Nope, it actually doesn't. You have no understanding at all.

Every accusation is a confession.

Go ask NASA how they use delayed-time seeing to plot celestial courses. Remember when we took your claims to an astronomy board, and you refused to read their responses?

You are wrong about many things, so I am not going to get into this with you again. I found reasons why an alternate explanation as to Romer's eclipse could have been caused by gravitational coalescence. The science is unsettled whether you think so or not. Now stop blaming me for bringing this up. You did.

Jupiter's slower orbit at different times of the year is due to loss of heat and gravitational coalescence12. Additionally, Kepler's Third Law states that planets farther from the Sun travel slower due to weaker gravitational pull3. Orbital resonance can also cause speed changes in planets and asteroids5.

 

[peacegirl]

Error

This kind of brief summary of a poster's position is something I have long felt that this board could really benefit from.

Well done.

Funny! Would make it a lot easier.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

But quantum indeterminacy is the indirect cause of the mutation ...

Pressure is not found, does not occur at the quantum level; it is detectable and observable at the macrophysical level. Likewise, the same can be said of causation. For that matter, half-life refers to a supra-quantum - in fact, most usually (or is it most usefully or reliably?) a macrophysical perspective or context. The notion called half-life is not applicable to, is not relevant to a single atom. You said:

quantum indeterminacy repeatedly scales up to the macro world

That brings us back to the matter of the issue of what humans experience as indeterminateness. Do you hold that the human-level experience of there being indeterminateness is an experience of actual (meta)physical indeterminateness or not?

The notion of half-life is relevant in another way. Half-life sets as its context whatever is a sufficient quantity of some radioactive material. The half-life context also holds that there is indeterminateness with regards to when which components will decay. But the half-life context also asserts a determinateness by noting that half of the material will decay over the course of some duration. That makes half-life a determinate context which includes indeterminateness at a (relatively) macrophysical level. The half-life notion is an acknowledgement of there being constraints or limits to the indeterminateness, but those constraints/limits do not erase, deny, or preclude the indeterminateness. For that matter, the half-life determines nothing about the indeterminateness or its resolution.

We can posit something similar in logic. The expression Possibly A can indicate (and we here will assume that it does indicate) an indeterminate condition. For the sake of this discussion, let us say that Possibly A is reference to some macrophysical situation; we are assuming that this is not an epistemic matter. The same applies to the expression Possibly not-A. The conjunction of Possibly A and Possibly not-A produces an utterly determinate context. But it is a context which is not devoid of indeterminateness; it is a context which does not preclude indeterminateness. It is not a context which determines a resolution of the indeterminateness.

So, again, what I am trying to find out (determine?!) is whether you hold that the human-level experience of there being indeterminateness is an experience of actual (meta)physical indeterminateness, or is that never the case?

 

[Jarhyn]

Stop using this to prove free will. No determinist that I know of would say you could NOT choose otherwise in a different situation that would naturally elicit a different response. Show me where this applies to the situation that compels a reaction due to having no choice given the options. You seem to be sidestepping the main argument Pood!

You seem unable to comprehend what I write

You keep using logical necessity and other worlds as some kind of proof that the world didn't have to unfold as it actually did. You cannot prove this, and your modal logic does nothing to prove it either.

Since the history of the world is a vast set of contingencies, which means that events could have been otherwise, and because quantum indeterminacy repeatedly scales up to the macro world, I have proved it.

And because we can move many observable universes away and find one like this, doing otherwise, it is sufficient for me to observe otherwise.

Scaling down from the entirety is just a logical exercise after that which allows contemplations that will say true things about any system such as our universe with it's strict physical tendencies.

Yes, our universe ostensibly has a black swan presaging a 5th spatial dimension, IFF we cannot find in the real structure of the universe a suitable seed of unpredictability to impact "balls on hilltops" to force their direction of motion.

I would propose that unless we lack a gravitational horizon, the growth of that horizon on the irregular front of the edge of the universe interacting inexorably with the shifts in center of gravity, however miniscule, so as to thwart held equilibrium.

I expect that we *must* have a gravitational horizon, if we have a light horizon and gravity interacts at the speed of causality that governs light, and because we know kind of what's going on as we get further out but the background is opaque to other light, and gravity sees no such limits.

The horizon of the big bang ticks back but by but, and gravity starts interacting but by but beyond that, from our perspective... And there are less random but still bogglingly chaotic things much closer subtly altering centers of gravity chaotically... And "the stuff at the unseeable edge" is different for every particle in the universe.

That's actually a dice roll in a preloaded dice roller, and if that's enough information to account for quantum indeterminacy, to then my "infinite preloaded dice roller model of determinism" is actually sound, with a demonstrable source of "dice".

It really just depends on how truly random that first moment was, or how "normal" the function of it.

If it's "truly random", then we have finite choice, and possibility holds, and "parallelity" is a property of a 4d block, especially if there's no way to actually interact between the leaves of said block hyper-space-time. Wow, that's weird to say unironically!

We know we have time selection in 4d or broadly so, unless as Pood suggested (that we may have tachyons or nonlocal phenomena and then "the whole universe could be thinking together"), we would instead be something both deterministic and completely unplannable and unpredictable.

My thoughts on this may be entirely wrong and I'm sure some people will say they are obtuse, and I am sure they are. I just like getting high and thinking through the implications of the big bang and ideas about creation and the beginning and simulations and so on.

But I guess to the topic, such is "beyond physics" right up until it isn't. It's a statement that all of the very beginning of the universe may be indeterministic and even "normal", and everything thereafter may be deterministic, and the result is a deterministic block universe.

This doesn't mean there's no free will, it just means that the big bang doesn't plan things and there's probably enough information on the expanding horizon to account for randomness, and if so, it really would be random.

 

[bilby]

Quantum indeterminacy is not in any way able to introduce choice. It just adds randomness.

Randomness isn't choice, any more than predictability is.

The random-predictable axis is orthoganal to the free-forced axis.

Quantum randomness is, however, a neat example of the vital importance of scale.

At subatomic scales, entities behave randomly; But at macroscopic scales, that randomness aggregates (counterintuitively) into predictability. A sufficiently large sample of quantum particles behaves in exact accordance with Newtonian physics*.

We don't need to consider, or even to know of, the quantum "weirdness" that exists in every physical system, in order to exactly describe the behaviour of every macroscopic physical system in purely deterministic terms.

Scale tells us what kinds of descriptions are useful.

Determinism may be as universal as quantum mechanics, but it's also just as useless as a way to model human behaviour.

Newtonian mechanics may not be fundamentally the way reality works; But it is by far the most useful and effective way to model human scale physics.

Free will may not be fundamentally the way reality works; But it is by far the most useful and effective way to model human behaviour.

That's your compatibilism right there.








*For that matter, the lifespan of a uranium atom before it decays is completely unpredictable, but the half-life of a kilogram of uranium is completely predictable, despite radioactive decay being an entirely quantum mechanical phenomenon.

 

[Jarhyn]

It ("the world") is built on a series of contingencies that may or may not have anything to do with QM, though QM does definitely affect the macro realm.

If your compatibilism is at all dependent on contingencies that have anything to do with QM indeterminacy then you're not a compatibilist.

If your compatibilist beliefs hold true independently of any possible quantum indeterminacy then why would you even bring the subject up?

You surely realise that many hard determinists believe that most compatibilists aren't really 'true' determinists. So when you raise the subject of quantum indeterminacy in the context of a debate about free will you just add fuel to this mistaken belief.

I model my model of free will in entirely deterministic terms. Personally, I think that the universe is deterministic with internally unpredictable elements. I even outlined how that can be in a previous post.

On a larger scale, a whole different form of determinism would be happening according to probabilities of the smaller things determining outcomes (sometimes randomly) en masse, and this presents as Newtonian motion, and nerve pulses operate in terms of more Newtonian sorts of interactions.

I think that the language of "decision" and "possibility" is about the laws which describe the uniform behavior of matter in general. These are things true *all across the block universe* and we use simulation to reason out those truths.

I sometimes feel required, perhaps as Sabine Hossenfelder (sp.?) does, to defend a concept of determinism against many-worlds QM interpretations just so that I can avoid the perception that I'm a fake determinist or that compatibilism is fake determinism.

But my model of responsibility and free will doesn't have issue with that.

 

[pood]

Nope, it actually doesn't. You have no understanding at all.

Every accusation is a confession.

Go ask NASA how they use delayed-time seeing to plot celestial courses. Remember when we took your claims to an astronomy board, and you refused to read their responses?

You are wrong about many things, so I am not going to get into this with you again. I found reasons why an alternate explanation as to Romer's eclipse could have been caused by gravitational coalescence. The science is unsettled whether you think so or not. Now stop blaming me for bringing this up. You did.

Jupiter's slower orbit at different times of the year is due to loss of heat and gravitational coalescence12. Additionally, Kepler's Third Law states that planets farther from the Sun travel slower due to weaker gravitational pull3. Orbital resonance can also cause speed changes in planets and asteroids5.

The above has got NOTHING TO DO with seeing in real time. No matter how slow or fast the orbits, no matter how far or near Jupiter and Io are with respect to us, if we saw in real time as your author claims, there would be NO TIME DIFFERENTIAL in seeing those bodies, regardless of their orbits or how far or near they are to us. Because there IS a time differential, we do NOT see in real time.

Please stop derailing this thread with this BS. I will report another derailment, as I will report another ad hom attack.

 

[DBT]

When DBT repeatedly brings up “inner necessity” to claim we do not have compatibilist freedom, I simply ask again and again: What kind of “necessity” is he talking about?

It cannot be logical necessity, for reasons I have given. So what IS this necessity of which he speaks? I hold that it does not exist — that the only form of necessity is logical necessity.

But it is true, of course, that people use language in a loose and often slipshod manner, so we might say, for instance, that it is “necessary” to eat a big breakfast if you are doing to do a hard day’s work. But it’s not necessary at all; it’s just advisable.

I have explained what I mean by inner necessity multiple time: determinism. It just means that the brain as the means and mechanism by which decisions are made determines what is decided in any given instance of decision making.

That decisions being determined by neural information processing are just as much a restriction on freedom of will as the external terms defined by compatibilism; being forced, coerced or unduly influenced.

 

[bilby]

I have explained what I mean by inner necessity multiple time: determinism.

Well, there's your problem.

Determinism is a description of the whole of spacetime. It has nothing to do with inner anything. Determinism is outer necessity, and is relevant to universes, and not to the individuals therein.

To claim that because spacetime as a whole is deterministic, therefore so must each and every one of its components be, is just the fallacy of division.

There is no "inner necessity"; There's just individuals. Making choices.

 

[steve_bank]

Exactly. Abstract definitions used as part of other abstract definitions. Metaphysics, systems of abstractions. Science ties abstractions to humongous physical units.

As I posted point to a situation that demonstrates free will or determinism. It becomes self referential.

I freely chose Pepsi over Coke therefore I exercised free will.

Given modern science any discussion of the topic has to include neuroscience.

AI is a first attempt to mimic human brains. In an AI it is not possible to localize where a decision is made. It is not deterministic.

Determinism is not a thing found in the brain. It is a product of the brain. That is why observation is more valuable in terms of getting to the truth rather than looking at the brain directly. There is some indication that choices are made by the brain before we are even aware of those choices on a conscious level. But our actions are performed consciously, so this does not exempt us of responsibility since we are the ones that give an action permission.

Determinism is how you imagine it to be n your mid, aka brain.

Your reply to e is philosophical jabber jabber. Lots of words that really say not6hng.

In terms of modern science how we make decisions and our thought process depend on how our brains are wired.

Debating determinism without the brain is like debating how the eye weeks without optics or discussing disease without discussing the immune system.

There is no single determinism, it varies with people and the times, as is the case with philosophy in general. The universe may be epidermis, but our brains may not be, why not?

Determinism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.[1] Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Like eternalism, determinism focuses on particular events rather than the future as a concept. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.[2][3] A more extreme antonym of determinism is indeterminism, or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to random chance.

Historically, debates about determinism have involved many philosophical positions and given rise to multiple varieties or interpretations of determinism. One topic of debate concerns the scope of determined systems. Some philosophers have maintained that the entire universe is a single determinate system, while others identify more limited determinate systems. Another common debate topic is whether determinism and free will can coexist; compatibilism and incompatibilism represent the opposing sides of this debate.

Determinism should not be confused with the self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, and desires. Determinism is about interactions which affect cognitive processes in people's lives.[4] It is about the cause and the result of what people have done. Cause and result are always bound together in cognitive processes. It assumes that if an observer has sufficient information about an object or human being, that such an observer might be able to predict every consequent move of that object or human being. Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible.

To prove determinism you would have to redo the BB a umber of times and record all events....not possible.

As I believe the best explanation of origins is a universe that always was and always will be determinism is not provable experimentally.

 

[The AntiChris]

*Sigh*
Did you read where I informed you that I DID NOT BRING UP THE SUBJECT, peacegirl did?

I don't read peacegirl's posts.

In posts #155 and #158 you appear to be the one raising the subject of quantum indeterminacy . If I'm mistaken, I apologise.

 

[aupmanyav]

As I believe the best explanation of origins is a universe that always was and always will be determinism is not provable experimentally.

That is no different from God always was and always will be.
There should be a cause.

 

[DBT]

I have explained what I mean by inner necessity multiple time: determinism.

Well, there's your problem.

Determinism is a description of the whole of spacetime. It has nothing to do with inner anything. Determinism is outer necessity, and is relevant to universes, and not to the individuals therein.

To claim that because spacetime as a whole is deterministic, therefore so must each and every one of its components be, is just the fallacy of division.

There is no "inner necessity"; There's just individuals. Making choices.

Inner necesssity refers to nothing more than the neural architecure of a brain and its information processing activity, which is inseparable from the world at large and its progression of events.

Where, if the world is determinsitic as compatibilists define it to be, whatever is thought and whatever is decided is just as inevitable as the progression of events in the system at large.

Which, by definition, evolves from past to present and future states of the system without deviation or the possibility of alternate actions.....which of course includes whatever is happening in a brain.

Like it not, that's determinism.

 

[peacegirl]

Exactly. Abstract definitions used as part of other abstract definitions. Metaphysics, systems of abstractions. Science ties abstractions to humongous physical units.

As I posted point to a situation that demonstrates free will or determinism. It becomes self referential.

I freely chose Pepsi over Coke therefore I exercised free will.

Given modern science any discussion of the topic has to include neuroscience.

AI is a first attempt to mimic human brains. In an AI it is not possible to localize where a decision is made. It is not deterministic.

Determinism is not a thing found in the brain. It is a product of the brain. That is why observation is more valuable in terms of getting to the truth rather than looking at the brain directly. There is some indication that choices are made by the brain before we are even aware of those choices on a conscious level. But our actions are performed consciously, so this does not exempt us of responsibility since we are the ones that give an action permission.

Determinism is how you imagine it to be n your mid, aka brain.

Your reply to e is philosophical jabber jabber. Lots of words that really say not6hng.

In terms of modern science how we make decisions and our thought process depend on how our brains are wired.

Debating determinism without the brain is like debating how the eye weeks without optics or discussing disease without discussing the immune system.

There is no single determinism, it varies with people and the times, as is the case with philosophy in general. The universe may be epidermis, but our brains may not be, why not?

Determinism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.[1] Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Like eternalism, determinism focuses on particular events rather than the future as a concept. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.[2][3] A more extreme antonym of determinism is indeterminism, or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to random chance.

Historically, debates about determinism have involved many philosophical positions and given rise to multiple varieties or interpretations of determinism. One topic of debate concerns the scope of determined systems. Some philosophers have maintained that the entire universe is a single determinate system, while others identify more limited determinate systems. Another common debate topic is whether determinism and free will can coexist; compatibilism and incompatibilism represent the opposing sides of this debate.

Determinism should not be confused with the self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, and desires. Determinism is about interactions which affect cognitive processes in people's lives.[4] It is about the cause and the result of what people have done. Cause and result are always bound together in cognitive processes. It assumes that if an observer has sufficient information about an object or human being, that such an observer might be able to predict every consequent move of that object or human being. Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible.

To prove determinism you would have to redo the BB a umber of times and record all events....not possible.

As I believe the best explanation of origins is a universe that always was and always will be determinism is not provable experimentally.

It’s not possible to prove free will true experimentally because we can’t go back in time, but that doesn’t mean we cannot prove determinism true.

 

[peacegirl]

Of

Nope, it actually doesn't. You have no understanding at all.

Every accusation is a confession.

Go ask NASA how they use delayed-time seeing to plot celestial courses. Remember when we took your claims to an astronomy board, and you refused to read their responses?

You are wrong about many things, so I am not going to get into this with you again. I found reasons why an alternate explanation as to Romer's eclipse could have been caused by gravitational coalescence. The science is unsettled whether you think so or not. Now stop blaming me for bringing this up. You did.

Jupiter's slower orbit at different times of the year is due to loss of heat and gravitational coalescence12. Additionally, Kepler's Third Law states that planets farther from the Sun travel slower due to weaker gravitational pull3. Orbital resonance can also cause speed changes in planets and asteroids5.

The above has got NOTHING TO DO with seeing in real time. No matter how slow or fast the orbits, no matter how far or near Jupiter and Io are with respect to us, if we saw in real time as your author claims, there would be NO TIME DIFFERENTIAL in seeing those bodies, regardless of their orbits or how far or near they are to us. Because there IS a time differential, we do NOT see in real time.

There would definitely be a time differential in seeing those bodies. Slower orbits would change the timing without it being due to delayed light. The explanation given is not the only possible one.

Please stop derailing this thread with this BS. I will report another derailment, as I will report another ad hom attack.

Stop threatening me Pood or I will report you! I did not bring the eyes up so stop making me a scapegoat!

 

[pood]

*Sigh*
Did you read where I informed you that I DID NOT BRING UP THE SUBJECT, peacegirl did?

I don't read peacegirl's posts.

In posts #155 and #158 you appear to be the one raising the subject of quantum indeterminacy . If I'm mistaken, I apologise.

As noted, I brought up quantum indeterminacy in response to her claim that the whole history of the universe “had to be” what it was. I invoked quantum indeterminacy to point out that this is decidedly not so — many things happen via indeterminism — but I also pointed out that even if quantum indeterminacy were not true, it still is not the case that the universe “had to be” the way that it was. I also specifically said, at least twice, that quantum indeterminacy is not relevant to the compatibilist argument.

 

[Elixir]

even if quantum indeterminacy were not true, it still is not the case that the universe “had to be” the way that it was

Unless you go with certain multiverse interpretations, wherein each universe exists in the timeline determined by prior choices.

 

[pood]

even if quantum indeterminacy were not true, it still is not the case that the universe “had to be” the way that it was

Unless you go with certain multiverse interpretations, wherein each universe exists in the timeline determined by prior choices.

You don’t need a multiverse. This universe, with it history, is a chain of virtually endlessly contingent truths, which logically could have been otherwise.