Comments

  • The dark room problem
    questions and saying a miracle is god's doing doesn't tell us anything at all as to how god did it?TheMadFool

    God can interfere by means of hidden variables constituting the wavefunction. He could make wavefunctions in the atmosphere collapse in a controlled way to make a lighting flash strike you. I don't think he does though. He probably just leaves us alone.Turning water in wine is more complicated. The watery wavefunction is not fit. He just can't make winey atoms appear next to water ones.
  • The dark room problem
    A rather scientific bent of mind. Lawrence Krauss (physicist) remarks in an interview that scientist's go to their workplaces with one and only one aim - prove their colleagues wrong. This I read to mean that scientists are on the lookout for disproving counterexamples to existing, universally endorsed theories (scientific miracles) like Einstein's relativity for example.TheMadFool

    LK is rather narrow-minded. If reproducibility were the norm, a lot of science wouldn't exist. Stuff being reproducable is a methodological imperative narrowing scientific knowledge. Adhering strictly to it inhibits scientific progress. "But it has to be reproducable". The big bang would be a miracle. And it is a miracle!
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    your feelings are irrelevant. free will is an illusion caused by ignorance

    Complete self recursion is impossible, this is what causes the hard problem of consciousness, the illusion of free will, and the ego.
    Miller

    That's what you think. Just show me the program. I don't mean the laws of nature. Nature doesn't follow an explicit program, and neither does the brain. A complete self image is impossible. Why should that cause the hard problem? The hard problem is just the inability to explain conscious experiences. That has nothing to do with an incomplete image of the self. Nor do free will and and the ego. Of course you gotta have some self image in your mind. It would be very hard living if you hadn't. But why should an incomplete knowledge of yourself cause the hard problem? Obviously, the knowledge of the self by itself can't be included in that knowledge. As soon as you include that knowledge there is a bigger body of knowledge. But then you have to include that new body too. Etc. There is indeed no complete self reference. The brain cant indeed have a complete self image, as the proces involved in that knowledge can never be included. Well it can, but then only knowledge about knowledge, etc. is involved, not knowledge about other processes. But, again, what does this have to do with the hard problem? Why should only a complete knowledge be able to explain consciousness (I believe though that even if you had this it still couldn't explain it).
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    brain is programed by genetics and then environment. there is nothing else.Miller

    Programmed by genetics? How the #$@%? can genes program? Maybe in school you can get programmed systematically, but normally I don't feel programmed by my environment. Well, maybe when I ride on my bike to the supermarket, by the road and the cyclic motion my feet have to make. But apart from that, there is no program excecuted in my brain.
  • The dark room problem
    Point being, despite some protestations to the contrary, it is still not clear how this fits in with thermodynamics and information theory.Banno

    You like surprises obviously. New stuff increases your free energy. You brain aquires new forms, accompanied by entropy loss. A rather technical term to say you long for the spider under the pot.
  • The dark room problem
    I had in mind Descartes' "oven", in which he did his meditating. Perhaps an armchair in a comfy room with a laptop is the modern equivalent, the least surprising thing hereabouts.Banno

    Aah, I get you now. Literal dark rooms to withdraw in. The need for surprises in the mind is overt in there. All hail to the dark room. "Dark room honey, I will follow". I can remember being in love and on the first night we entered the dark space of a small cargo ship we encountered. Free energy was increased in large amounts.
  • The dark room problem
    In a darkened room, the brain will still be expending just as much energy in its metabolism.apokrisis

    I don't think so. Though it depends on the room. If it's dark and empty, no surprises will be there. You will do nothing at some moment. The free energy minimizes, to sustain the basic needs for life. But the urge for surprises will drive your brain to get in form. Free energy will increase.
  • The dark room problem
    :lol:


    Sure, caves are for things that crawl, dark rooms for philosophising.Banno


    Dunno. Dark rooms for philosophizing? What's to be found in them? Philosophical surprises? How is a dark room defined for philosophical purposes?
  • The dark room problem


    Did you read this thread?

    I was hungry, for real. I had 0 burgers, 0 hotdogs, 0 eggs, and 0 liters of milk. I'm, for some strange and unfathomable reason, still hungry.TheMadFool

    And I have no idea what you're saying here. Is this an example of absurdity?
  • The dark room problem


    Well, the discussion is about the avoidance of dark rooms because there might be surprises in there, and minimal free energy considerations would keep you away from it. Still you wanna increase your free energy to find out what's in the dark room, maybe the fridge.
  • The dark room problem
    I was hungry, for real. I had 0 burgers, 0 hotdogs, 0 eggs, and 0 liters of milk. I'm, for some strange unfathomable reason, still hungry.TheMadFool

    I'm sure there is some dark room in which burgers are smellingly inviting you.
  • The dark room problem
    the cave is to be avoided precisely because it holds surprises.Banno

    A cave is no dark room. I know exactly what to expect in the dark sleeping room. A dark cave may hold surprises. But why not enter it? Because it would increase free energy? That would be the result. Trying to be a minimum would not be the cause of not entering though.
  • The dark room problem
    But what it actually is saying is that the goal of minimising free energy is how a baseline for personal being gets established. The first requirement is to be able to have a structure of belief about the world - a reality model - that is not immediately being entropified away into uncertainty. That baseline is then what sets the scene for the second thing of actually getting to work on the world.apokrisis

    That baseline is achieved indeed by maintaining a certain free energy that's needed to live a life. In order to maintain that minimal required energy (a maximum possible entropy, above which the system collapses to a lower free energy, like a mixture of gas molecules reducing their free chemical potential energy if not kept below a certain temperature), there have to occur as less surprises as possible. The status quo can be maintained. If unexpected things happen, the free energy has to increase. Excitement occurs. Information increases, depending on the new situation. Free energy and information temporarily rearrange, and a new status quo will be achieved. After which the situation is familiar and free energy will diminish again. One can arrange life to meet as little surprises as possible, like seek sanctuary in a dark room, but surprises are needed in life.
  • The dark room problem
    Evolution isn't really trying to minimise surprise; it's trying to maximise fitness.Kenosha Kid

    Evolution doesn't try anything. Evolution is just a human invention, replacing a notion of god and his creation of life. There is no such thing as evolution standing above life, trying to create maximally fit life. It is life itself that evolves, not life guided by evolution. And life evolves in ways that are fit for the habitats they evolve in.
    Likewise, it's nonsense to say that life evolves under the strict influence of selfish genes which shape the vessels they are in in order to procreate themselves, or that memes guide human behavior in order to spread them. Of course, gene prolongation and memes hopping from mind to mind is what happens (like evolution) but life is not ordered by them (nor evolution).

    There are parameter maximization parameters indeed. If there is only the expected around, then the free energy will be tuned to the minimum (or entropy to a maximum) for which life will stay alive. Living in a dark room, how much of an unexpected event it might be, temporarily creating increase of free Gibbs energy, will become a state one gets used to, and a state of minimal free energy will arise.

    Is it really though? No, although the theory here seems to imply that (that life, once there, is a drive towards minimal free Gibbs). The dark room state will create rest at first, but then the excitement kicks in. Like fish kept in dark water develop big eyes. There is a need to encounter surprises or challenges. To exist in a world with surprises. Staying in a dark room will drive one mad. It might be a surprise to end up in it, but that's not the surprise one needs. Though occasionally it's nice. Like going to sleep temporarily reduces free energy. Maybe there are even people who want to stay asleep their whole lives, I dunno (didn't I hear it sung: "I am tired, I am weary. I could sleep for a thousand years. A thousand dreams, that would awake me. Different colors, made of tears").
    Living in a dark room might prolong life, but only for people not expecting anything.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    Brain has no more free will than a tvMiller

    Indeed not. But it's not programmed.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    So when it comes to the Standard Model of particle physics, the group symmetry doesn’t limit the material possibilities?apokrisis

    That's a far-fetched but interesting comparison! :smile:

    The groups though are derived from material processes. For example, in the strong interaction SU(3) was chosen and not U(3). The structures of the groups don't determine material possibilities, but vice versa. Of course later on you can use it the other way round.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    I suspect that basically you are right. Consciousness must be taken as granted rather than explained - especially if the only explanation one is willing to accept is physical.Banno




    :100:
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    Well the structure is what shapes the material stuff that it needs.apokrisis

    Ah! There you make a naive, but understandable mistake.Structures don't flow independently somewhere to create the material it needs. The structure lies in the matter itself. Structure is not some extramundane thing magically creating the matter it needs to jump in it. But looking at it this way indeed explains consciousness as structure. I, on the other hand, explain consciousness without reference to such a construction, far removed from reality. I experience consciousness, without placing it in structure that creates matter to click into. And that experience is consciousness, so why explain it?
  • The dark room problem


    Applying the minimization of free Gibbs energy to psychology is contrived. When free energy decreases entropy increases, but to form biological organisms in the first place the free energy has to increase. There is nothing that forbids the free energy from increasing during lifetime. There is no reason to expect that systems strive for minimizing free energy. Especially not biological systems, which take in energy to combat entropy reduction and preservation of ordered structure. Why should an animal strive for maintaining the status quo only, which is indeed achievable in dark rooms? Isn't there proof that this is not the case? A dark room might be a total surprise, totally unexpected, and will increase free energy. Luckily!
  • The dark room problem
    So you are right that "your brain will not develop"; but a brain that does not develop would itself be a surpriseBanno

    I see what you mean. So to evade the thrill of that surprise you escape the dark room to meet other surprises? On return to the dark room though, the non-evolving won't be a surprise no more though. Maybe for your unconsciousness, which might react again by sending you out, or making you dream to evade the surprise of not evolving.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    As I noted, we are just repeating arguments that haven't convinced the other in previous posts. I say "un hunh." You say "nunh hunh." Nuff said.T Clark

    No arguments used here can convince the others if they start from different premises. This doesn’t mean though that a TV and programs transmitted by it can be compared to a brain and mind. No matter from which premises you start, that's just a fact of life.
  • The dark room problem
    But why is minimising surprise the very same as living longest?Banno

    Minimizing free energy means living a non-agitated, calm, life, with a minimum of energy use, in a silent dark room with optimal temperature and nothing happening. Eating natural stuff, sleeping a lot, without thinking. I think your dreams get pretty wild though. Your brain will not develop (as torturing rats has shown). Eventough dreams try to accomplish this. You theoretically will live longer, but probably die of boredom or go mad.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    same with the brainMiller

    The difference being though that information in the brain isn't pushed around in a programmed way. The information flows through the neuron pathwaysnot by external voltages pushing it. The information flow isn't governed by a program, but only by strengths of neuron connections. Which could be considered as programmed. But not in the digital computer sense.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    activity in the brain is the conscious representation of what is creating consciousness outside of consciousnessMiller

    And as such consciousness is indeed inexplicable by a conscious representation in terms of materialistic processes.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    Why would a normally developing brain in a normally developing human fail to be conscious in the normal developing way? Answer me that. Don’t simply make extravagant claims of what you could imagine.apokrisis

    Where do I make extravagant claims. "Naive", "extravagant", "fail", "unable", to mention a few words of the vocabulary you use in battling me. All the more proof that your outlook on the problem is in deep trouble. Yes I am unable to explain consciousness. Because it isn't explainable.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    A naive realist might say that. A structural realist adopts a more sophisticated ontology.apokrisis

    That makes the reality referred to not less real. However complicated the strucures are, they still need stuff out of which the patterns and structures are formed.


    You are free to imagine whatever you want. I simply ask for a clear reason why all that structured action would fail to produce what it ordinarily produces.apokrisis

    Here you presuppose that it produces consciousness. Which is exactly the question. If one elementary particle is just matter, why shouldn't a highly structured bunch of them not just be that? Structured and coherent processes are no guarantee for consciousness. A vital component is missing.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    By itself, it's ballast.T Clark

    The difference between a TV is that a working brain provides you with a conscious world. A working brain cannot be seen outside a living body. Every working TV set or functioning computer, no matter how complicated or however intelligent artificially made, and no matter in what artificial robot body placed, are just media through which information is pushed under the influence of voltage and program.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    Now I can say this:

    I have a feeling you repeating your argument then me repeating mine again won't get us anywhere. Let's not do that.
    — T Clark
    — T Clark

    This was intended for Cartuna.
    T Clark

    Things are getting quite complicated now...
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    By itself it is not a medium.T Clark

    It is. There is no information passing it though. Like the silent air at night. A brain is no transmitting medium. Both will go kerplunk in water. The kerplunk varies, depending on brain and TV size.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    You are arguing against someone else. I’m a structuralist, not a materialist.apokrisis

    Structuralists look at the structure of matter. Their relations. Without matter there can be no structure. Even if it could, structure can't explain consciousness. It can say if it's present though, say by looking at structures in the nervous system. I'm not saying studying structures in the brain, body or physical world is useless either. It can be very enlightening. But not to explain seeing red or hearing music, or seeing a dream. You could ask how structured processes could ever fail to be accompanied by consciousness. But you could also ask how consciousness ever could exist without the patterned structures they are embedded in. Looking at the structures only will not do. I can imagine all structured neuron activity taking place without a conscious experience. It would be very strange though then, if for example a child cried after she felt and hurt her knee.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    I don't get the comparisons you're trying to make. A newspaper is not a processing device. Air is not a processing device. A TV set is not a medium. It's just a box of wire and plastic.T Clark

    A TV, like the computer you are talking with me now, is just a medium. Air won't do because the distance between is is too big, I think. We could check by screaming out of the window loudly. A TV needs all kinds of internal machinery to translate the signals of a faraway event (even in the past, when recorded) to make it pallatable for eyes and ears, like a newspaper uses printed words. The programs sent are different each time, like the stories told in newspapers (though many times the stuff looks awfully uniform). Like the stories told in air. The fact that a TV and computer are electronics, wires, and integrated circuitry with an interactive feature doesn't mean they are no media. They are mass-media, in fact. Like the newspapers.

    How can I repeat myself if I have responded only once to you?
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    I was speaking of the TV set - a fully material electronic device. Inside, it has circuits, switches, and all that signal processing stuff. It is powered and receives patterned

    signal input from outside.
    T Clark

    Exactly the same holds for air. The direct medium. Like you put it, a newspaper should be comparable to a brain and the stories in it to the mind. Or air to a brain and the songs traveling in it to the mind. The problem is that all media belong to the same physical world as the information contained in them. The brain is no medium though.
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    Anyhow, the only view on the double slit experiment and measurements which doesn't give rise to strange stuff like the MWI, observer dependency of reality, Schrödinger's cat, or Wigner's friend, is assigning a physical reality to the wavefunction. The mathematical form describing a real distribution of hidden variables, the collapse being a literal collapse which can be non-unitary, and instantaneous over space due to their non-local nature. No information can be sent this way and it can even be argued that hidden variables constitute space.
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    Although "bullshit" is a recognised technical term here. I think Banno knows the origin.Kenosha Kid

    Haha! Wtf is Banno? Did he lay under a bull's hole?
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    The analogy is with continuing to engage with someone long after you've realised they're not bound by normal debate conventionsKenosha Kid

    In that case I should indeed stop debating. Red herrings are not part of a normal debate, nor terms like bs, wtf, etc.

    like knowing or caring wtf they're talking about.Kenosha Kid

    You stated that the electron's magnetic moment is caused by a continuous current. I asked to explain how this happens then. Instead a new red herring. And a wtf, while you are the one who is bs... oops, while you are the one who shows he doesn't know what he is talking about. Don't take it all too seriously. Physics is just a nice game. But I understand that you feel endangered in your position of the hoarder of the herd. I'm just a newbie (not to be trusted), after all... :smile:
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    Not upset, just not averse to calling a spade a spade,Kenosha Kid

    I'm not either. Your spade is a different one than mine, that's all. I'm not sure what poker has got to do with this discussion though. I played a hidden variables card and you can't use it for your set. That makes you angry. Hidden variable wavefunctions collapse literally. And you still not made it clear how electron spin is caused by electric current. You keep on throwing in red herrings to diverge attention. Not very constructive.
  • Double Slit Experiment.


    No need to get upset! Jesus man! For the sake of others you point out that I am bullshiting? How noble! Even Feynman didn't understand electron spin and you pretend you know? Explain me please.
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    In collapse interpretations onlyKenosha Kid

    That's the one I'm talking about. Bohmian mechanics.

    No, it shouldn't cause EM radiation. Collapse simply changes the state amplitudes. You're back to thinking that physical properties themselves are somehow split. When collapse takes you from a*E1 + b*E2, for instance, there's no transition from E2 to E1. That wouldn't be collapse, that would be a process.Kenosha Kid

    If you envision the electron as being smeared out, than a change in this smearing out should cause a change in the associated smeared out electric field. This is not observed. I do indeed think that the electron and wavefunction are split. In this view the collapse is a process.



    There's no randomness in Bohm, that's the point. There's _chaotic_ behaviour: which trajectory the pilot wave forces the particle is extremely mesensitive to small, hidden differences in initial state, but is deterministic.Kenosha Kid

    I said there is a seemingly random motion of the BP determined by the medium.

    That's precisely where the magnetic moment of a charged particle comes from.Kenosha Kid

    That's exactly where it doesn't come from. At least, not in the point particle view.
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    Obviously there is, since consensus in science is built around evidence. Where there is no evidence, there is no orthodoxy. The correct interpretation of QM is still up for grabs, but that doesn't mean that any theory is as good as any other. One example is that God selects outcomes of quantum events.Kenosha Kid

    Once again, if there was evidence, you would make it to the headlines. The only evidence so far is the evidence for the non-existence of local hidden variables. And these are exactly the ones not needed for hidden variables. God may even select outcomes by means of hidden variables. Would explain nicely weird coincidences, though more down-to-Earth explanations could do just as well.

    That is the evidence, since in hidden variables theories like Bohmian mechanics, it _should_ have a dipole moment: two charges separated by space makes a dipole.Kenosha Kid

    That's why Bohmian mechanics isn't adequate. An adequate formulation doesn't predict an observable dipole moment. A smeared out electron, as suggested by the standard interpretation, implies an expanding negatively charged structure which can't collapse. A negatively charged extended structure only expands (in empty space). A measurement causes collapse though.
    This should cause EM radiation, which isn't observed in a double slit experiment with electrons, like there is no electric moment observed for s-orbitals in atoms.

    This shows that both in your example (there has to be a time-dependent electric moment), as well as in mine (there should be an EM field), QFT hasn't been taken into consideration, which for bound systems is rather complicated.

    An EM field exists whether it's static or moving. That's what charge ensures. Where do you get this stuff? Hearing Brownian motion come up makes me think you're just grabbing at physics concepts at random in order to keep speaking for the sake of speaking.Kenosha Kid

    At random? If you can't see the connection with hidden variables then I can only conclude you don't understand hidden variables. The medium in which the particle flows represents the wavefunction which litterally makes the Brownian move erratically and seemingly randomly. But the motion is determined by the medium. Metaphors, my dear... Don't take it literally. And certainly not randomly, which you only use here to belittle my argument. If you would see the connection it's not random, but if you don't see it than it looks random indeed. I'm not sure what's the tenth red herring about speaking for the sake of speaking is about.

    But there ia no continuous flow of current.
    — Cartuna

    Orbital angular momentum? Spin?
    Kenosha Kid

    I'm not speaking here about the electron in a hydrogen atom. I'm saying that for a time varying EM field to appear, a continuous flow of charge is needed. An electron in an s-orbital has no angular momentum, and to associate spin with a continuous flow of current flies in the face of all modern conceptions of spin. The spin of an electron isn't related to a continuous flow of current (which only goes to show that the concept of a point particle isn't sufficient). An electron hopping around in the s-orbital will not produce a measurable electric dipole. If the hopping is fast enough. It would be a great test though to see if hidden variables are really there. :smile:
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    That's untrue even in Bohmian mechanics. The electron is still moving, the relevant point is there should be a time-dependent electric dipole from the two separated charges.Kenosha Kid

    And there you make a false assumption. I already mentioned this. If an electron hops erratically like a Brownian particle, you would expect an EM field to come out of the wavefunction. But there ia no continuous flow of current. Just an electron being here and then there, smoothening out the virtual photon condensate around it. That's why there is no overall dipole moment.

    An electron in the s-state is not a smeared out electron, as the probabilistic interpretation suggests.
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