The Science and Mechanics of Free Will

[Malintent]

No it doesn't. Neither observer ever experiences the year infinity; The pilot likely dies fairly young, and the mission controller lives a normal human lifespan - during which time he never sees the spacecraft cross the event horizon. Even his distant decendants never see that happen. Because it never does happen IN THEIR FRAME OF REFERENCE.

There is no paradox here.

Okay maybe it's just troubling. Because, for the people passing through the horizon, the universe outside of the black hole would be infinitely old. They would have exhausted an infinite amount of time external to them. It's just disturbing.

Well that's just the problem with infinities. Archimedes described the paradox of dichotomy, which we can relate to the two frames of reference. It goes like this.

From one point of view, I can walk across my yard in 1 minute. I spend duration T = 0 to T = 1 performing the task of traversing the yard.
From another point of view, before I can possibly walk all the way across the yard, I first have to walk halfway. at T = 1/2 I am halfway across the yard. Before I can walk the rest of the way across the yard, I first have to walk halfway the remaining distance. T = {1/2 + 1/4}.
we can keep dividing the remaining distances in half...

T = {1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64....}

The one performing the task of traversing the distance will take an infinite amount of time to traverse the finite distance.
The observer, however, can still say that it takes 1 minute to traverse the distance.

The solution is simple. T =1. therefore,
{1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64....} = 1

The infinite set sums to a finite number. From one point of view it takes forever to get where you are going, but from the other, it is finite.

 

[fromderinside]

Really? Where is this dimension? As far as I can tell its measuring change in matter confounded with place. Time dilatation problem? Get rid of time. Substitute change in minimum size application of energy. As matter gets near black hole now (minimum size) becomes very large.

Ever heard if spacetime? That is how relativity referes to these four dimensions.
The lorentz transformations are rotations in these four dimensions with the detail that time is (mathematically) imaginary.

That is no news at all.

Way too close to confounding for my tastes. Simplify. Reduce everything to space and explain without risking time/space confounds. I believe these are Barbour's attitudes which should make QM and Macroscopic Relativity more compatible. Don't you think its just too hard to join two dimensions at the hip and then reduce beyond the measurable to boot as an explanation plan?

 

[ryan]

No, I believe in the experience before anything else.

Let me explain from the opposite point of view, and you may see that monism is possible. We get firsthand knowledge of the inner workings, but why can't that be all there is? Why do we have to call it a process in the brain"? Can't it just be one kind of thing? We experience the radiation of other people's experiences, but that is not to say that we know that there is a process in addition to qualia.

As much as I have fought, and will continue to fight, physicalism, there is a kind of Occam kind of simplicity to it.

You betray the lunacy of your position with one word "We".

What is this "we" that gets things?

Like I said in my post, let's let the mind be a priori to matter. Now let's see what happens.

As we know, the mind is discontinuous from other metal entities, and the stuff we call material, such as photons and molecules, are now the mystery. If we are minds, what is this stuff outside of our minds? Why can't they be pieces of minds, and when they come together to form a brain, they create a larger and more coherent and complex mind from its mental parts. In other words, do we need non-mental substances?

And then this just becomes physicalism all over again.

 

[ryan]

Okay maybe it's just troubling. Because, for the people passing through the horizon, the universe outside of the black hole would be infinitely old. They would have exhausted an infinite amount of time external to them. It's just disturbing.

Well that's just the problem with infinities. Archimedes described the paradox of dichotomy, which we can relate to the two frames of reference. It goes like this.

From one point of view, I can walk across my yard in 1 minute. I spend duration T = 0 to T = 1 performing the task of traversing the yard.
From another point of view, before I can possibly walk all the way across the yard, I first have to walk halfway. at T = 1/2 I am halfway across the yard. Before I can walk the rest of the way across the yard, I first have to walk halfway the remaining distance. T = {1/2 + 1/4}.
we can keep dividing the remaining distances in half...

T = {1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64....}

The one performing the task of traversing the distance will take an infinite amount of time to traverse the finite distance.
The observer, however, can still say that it takes 1 minute to traverse the distance.

The solution is simple. T =1. therefore,
{1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64....} = 1

The infinite set sums to a finite number. From one point of view it takes forever to get where you are going, but from the other, it is finite.

I agree, and I don't personally think Zeno's paradox about the arrow is actually a paradox.

Somehow an infinite number of years pass for the universe outside of the black hole too. Yes, the ship in the black hole hits the accelerating fast-forward button, but the universe outside of the black hole really does have to go through those years in there own proper time.

 

[untermensche]

You betray the lunacy of your position with one word "We".

What is this "we" that gets things?

Like I said in my post, let's let the mind be a priori to matter. Now let's see what happens.

That isn't necessary to say one has the direct experience of a mind.

Nobody has an experience of a brain, whatever that could possibly mean. The have an experience of something the brain has generated.

The brain and the generation are two distinct things.

If we are minds, what is this stuff outside of our minds?

If I am magnetism what is that metal bar over there?

 

[fromderinside]

...

The brain and the generation are two distinct things.

...

You would never be asked to design for Buick if you don't know that form follows function.

 

[untermensche]

...

The brain and the generation are two distinct things.

...

You would never be asked to design for Buick if you don't know that form follows function.

Non sequitur.

The brain and whatever it generates are two different things.

The wheels and movement are two different things.

 

[ryan]

Like I said in my post, let's let the mind be a priori to matter. Now let's see what happens.

That isn't necessary to say one has the direct experience of a mind.

Nobody has an experience of a brain, whatever that could possibly mean. The have an experience of something the brain has generated.

The brain and the generation are two distinct things.

If we are minds, what is this stuff outside of our minds?

If I am magnetism what is that metal bar over there?

Nothing is really ever generated if you look at any system piece by piece. There is a conservation of momentum, mass, energy, etc. It all just changes its positions. Even virtual particles of magnetism come from vacuum energy that exist in a "sea" of particles occupying what falsely appears to be empty space.

 

[untermensche]

Nothing is really ever generated if you look at any system piece by piece. There is a conservation of momentum, mass, energy, etc. It all just changes its positions. Even virtual particles of magnetism come from vacuum energy that exist in a "sea" of particles occupying what falsely appears to be empty space.

What about vision? Is something generated? A representation of what is looked at?

 

[ryan]

Nothing is really ever generated if you look at any system piece by piece. There is a conservation of momentum, mass, energy, etc. It all just changes its positions. Even virtual particles of magnetism come from vacuum energy that exist in a "sea" of particles occupying what falsely appears to be empty space.

What about vision? Is something generated? A representation of what is looked at?

Panpsychism is an interesting idea. It would say that each photon, or whatever is the actual physical representation of a visual, is a bit of the visual itself. Let everything be mental, and nothing is generated and reductionism simplifies to one kind of substance.

The feeling that the mind is alien to matter may just be because of the discontinuity of each mind.

 

[bilby]

No it doesn't. Neither observer ever experiences the year infinity; The pilot likely dies fairly young, and the mission controller lives a normal human lifespan - during which time he never sees the spacecraft cross the event horizon. Even his distant decendants never see that happen. Because it never does happen IN THEIR FRAME OF REFERENCE.

There is no paradox here.

Okay maybe it's just troubling. Because, for the people passing through the horizon, the universe outside of the black hole would be infinitely old. They would have exhausted an infinite amount of time external to them. It's just disturbing.

Reality is under no obligation to avoid disturbing you.

If you can't demonstrate a paradox, then you have no justification for declaring one on the basis of your emotional response to the results of some simple arithmetic.

 

[ryan]

Okay maybe it's just troubling. Because, for the people passing through the horizon, the universe outside of the black hole would be infinitely old. They would have exhausted an infinite amount of time external to them. It's just disturbing.

Reality is under no obligation to avoid disturbing you.

If you can't demonstrate a paradox, then you have no justification for declaring one on the basis of your emotional response to the results of some simple arithmetic.

The post was meant to take back the paradox claim.

And I meant that it is intellectually troubling/disturbing for me.

 

[untermensche]

What about vision? Is something generated? A representation of what is looked at?

Panpsychism is an interesting idea. It would say that each photon, or whatever is the actual physical representation of a visual, is a bit of the visual itself. Let everything be mental, and nothing is generated and reductionism simplifies to one kind of substance.

The feeling that the mind is alien to matter may just be because of the discontinuity of each mind.

I don't understand what you're saying.

Color is something generated by the brain. It doesn't exist anywhere except in a mind.

 

[ryan]

Panpsychism is an interesting idea. It would say that each photon, or whatever is the actual physical representation of a visual, is a bit of the visual itself. Let everything be mental, and nothing is generated and reductionism simplifies to one kind of substance.

The feeling that the mind is alien to matter may just be because of the discontinuity of each mind.

I don't understand what you're saying.

Color is something generated by the brain. It doesn't exist anywhere except in a mind.

What if the sensation of color is just out there, and then it just passes through a larger more complex mind?

 

[untermensche]

I don't understand what you're saying.

Color is something generated by the brain. It doesn't exist anywhere except in a mind.

What if the sensation of color is just out there, and then it just passes through a larger more complex mind?

We know what is happening.

Energy, which has no color, is hitting the retina and then neural signals (again a filler term that really is unexplained) take that "information" to the brain and the brain does something and we have the visual experience of color. The brain is constructing color whole based on evolved properties.

Introducing any other entities into the process violates parsimony. They are unnecessary.

 

[ryan]

What if the sensation of color is just out there, and then it just passes through a larger more complex mind?

We know what is happening.

Energy, which has no color, is hitting the retina and then neural signals (again a filler term that really is unexplained) take that "information" to the brain and the brain does something and we have the visual experience of color. The brain is constructing color whole based on evolved properties.

Introducing any other entities into the process violates parsimony. They are unnecessary.

But I would think that your interpretation has unnecessary complexity. Call it color or call it momentum, but why do we need a dual report?

 

[untermensche]

We know what is happening.

Energy, which has no color, is hitting the retina and then neural signals (again a filler term that really is unexplained) take that "information" to the brain and the brain does something and we have the visual experience of color. The brain is constructing color whole based on evolved properties.

Introducing any other entities into the process violates parsimony. They are unnecessary.

But I would think that your interpretation has unnecessary complexity. Call it color or call it momentum, but why do we need a dual report?

There is still the thing "color, momentum" reported and that which reports it. That which experiences it.

 

[ryan]

But I would think that your interpretation has unnecessary complexity. Call it color or call it momentum, but why do we need a dual report?

There is still the thing "color, momentum" reported and that which reports it. That which experiences it.

Why does something have to have an experience? Why can't there just be an experience? The report can be just a continuation of the whole process.

 

[untermensche]

There is still the thing "color, momentum" reported and that which reports it. That which experiences it.

Why does something have to have an experience? Why can't there just be an experience? The report can be just a continuation of the whole process.

It is simple logic.

If there is an experience there is both that which is experienced and that which experiences it.

Something can have an experience, not nothing.

 

[ryan]

Why does something have to have an experience? Why can't there just be an experience? The report can be just a continuation of the whole process.

It is simple logic.

If there is an experience there is both that which is experienced and that which experiences it.

Something can have an experience, not nothing.

A pure substance would have only itself. The mind might be of this purity.