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  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    but they would happen without a timelineArtM

    that seems like an assumption, not a fact
  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    Imagine waking up tomorrow, realizing that thirty years of your life vanished, not forgotten, but as if they never existed at all. You jumped from infancy to adulthood in the blink of an eye, with no memories in between. This scenario sounds impossible, yet it’s exactly what occurs in situations like comas, alcohol-induced blackouts, or even during periods of deep, dreamless sleep. Here’s the profound question that emerges: if time is genuinely a fundamental dimension of our universe, why does it cease to exist the moment consciousness fades away?ArtM

    Disappointing opening paragraph. Why does it "cease to exist"? Just because some person isn't perceiving it, that means it "ceases to exist"? Hmmm... I'm pretty sure if a person is in a coma for 10 years, their body shows all the signs of time continuing to exist...

    Maybe OP lacks object permanence, or is some kind of solipsist. Otherwise I can't really make sense of this.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    For example ''Superman can fly in the fictional realm of DC''. Is true if stated as such and thus is knowledge. It doesn't require a belief to be true. It just is.Jack2848

    Nah, it has to involve belief. It's not "knowledge" unless someone knows it, there's already a word for truth without belief and that's called "fact".
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    Otherwise how could novelty ever enter the picture?Wayfarer

    Novelty is relative. As long as you couldn't predict it, it's novel - and you can't predict reality perfectly no matter how deterministic it is. You can predict certain low -complexity events, like the approximate location a bomb will land of you launch it at a particular angle with a particular amount of force, but you can't predict the future of a brain faster than the brain can do something that might surprise you, even if the processes in the brain are effectively macroscopically deterministic.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    you just said that physics is 'determined by subjective requirements'.....Wayfarer

    You put those words in quotes as if I literally said them, but I didn't say them.

    I'm flummoxed as to why you or anyone would find deteminism beautifulWayfarer

    Order. In a deterministic system, every event has its place in the system, every event has a clear explanation and follows from the way the system is. In an indeterministic system, there's chaos because "stuff just happens". There's nothing particularly beautiful about "stuff just happening", compared to the beauty of patterns and order. And you don't have to accept that, of course, it's not some kind of scientific fact that that's what beauty is. I'm not telling you you need to believe that, just saying why I do.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    I think a surprising amount of physics is based on abstract, apparently-subjective judgements of physicists. What would be a beautiful way for the world to work? Look at how much talk there is of symmetries in modern physics.

    I think there's an intuitional gulf between those that think that's a reasonable guiding principle and those that can't see why beauty should have anything to do with how reality operates. I personally can't justify why physics ought to be beautiful, but I feel in my bones that the success of physics ideas influenced by ideas of mathematical beauty are no mistake, no coincidence.

    A deterministic world is ordered, logical, "everything in its right place" - indeterminism includes things that happen for no reason, which is inherently disordered and chaotic. It's just not very neat.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    there are multiple deterministic interpretations of qm too so we can keep the beauty of determinism anyway.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    So why believe it?Moliere

    Because it's beautiful (in a mathematical sense). There's something hideous about random spontaneous things with no ontological explanation just popping into existence.

    I believe Einstein was hinting at that when he said God doesn't play dice.
  • Property Dualism
    to me, the most disappointing part of the audiobook is her reason for cutting her conversation with Sean Carroll short. It seemed like she was saying "he didn't like my idea, so I didn't want to talk to him any longer". Obviously it's her book, her right to direct the direction of the content, but I think they could have had a much longer, more interesting conversation if she allowed the conversation to explore an alternative viewpoint of consciousness.
  • Property Dualism
    she says herself that she's a physicalist multiple times in the audio book. She also says it here.

    https://open.spotify.com/episode/4uUFfDc8HYTsdbTengp1A2?si=03MxDbP0SsO8Q1yMUT4gAQ

    I guess she means, it's fundamental in a way that's somehow tied to physical things. I don't really know tbh, I'm not her and I don't have her ideas.

    The closest I get to fundamental consciousness is thinking that there might be a "thing it's like to be" any time there's a process that's sensitive to changing variables, and that might just be a fundamental truth. But I wouldn't commit to that position, it's at best a coin flip as far as I'm concerned. But if that were true, it would be I think straightforward to see how physical processes would end up with "what it's like to be"ness
  • Property Dualism
    "emergence" is merely a category of explanation, not an explanation in itself. The other category is "it's fundamental" - and some physicalists like Anika think that instead.

    Whether you're a physicalist or not, those are still the two options. Either it emerges from something, or it's fundamental in itself. I don't think that's a point against physicalism - I mean, at least in physicalism, there's an idea about what specifically it emerges from, and we can even manufacture a synthetic version of that that can learn to speak to us, which is... interesting, to say the least.
  • Property Dualism
    glad you liked it. I thought it was thought provoking but lacking in actual arguments. I did buy it for the thought provocation though, so it did its job as far as I'm concerned
  • In a free nation, should opinions against freedom be allowed?
    I think democracy is the wrong system for our nationLeontiskos

    that's what rejecting democracy means...
  • In a free nation, should opinions against freedom be allowed?
    it's only as much a performative contradiction as someone who is anti violence using violence to protect themselves from other violence, it seems to me.

    If you want a dictatorial monarchy, and the only way to achieve a dictatorial monarchy is to vote for it, that seems like an acceptable action towards that end.
  • In a free nation, should opinions against freedom be allowed?
    In a free nation, long posts without paragraph breaks shouldn't be allowed
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    right, with the Copenhagen interpretation the indeterminism comes AFTER the deterministic Schrödinger equation. The Schrödinger equation deterministically outputs a probability distribution, and then some mystery process indeterministically chooses a random result to obtain from that distribution.

    The distribution always comes from the Schrödinger equation though, and that's decided deterministically. Even in Copenhagen
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    there's not a "possible interpretation". It's an equation that is by definition deterministic. Indeterminism in various interpretations of quantum mechanics come AFTER the Schrödinger equation, not in the equation. There's no question it's deterministic
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    this conservation isn't about if its true. You expressed confusion about why people think many worlds is deterministic. Regardless of if it's true or not, you can hopefully be able to gain an understanding of why it's a deterministic world view.

    It says the world evolves according to the Schrödinger equation, it says the entire output of the Schrödinger equation is real in some sense, the Schrödinger equation is deterministic so that makes many worlds deterministic.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    so then sure it's deterministic, but with a probablistic mathematics which makes it such that you cannot tell what will necessarily happenMoliere

    In many worlds you can - what happens is all of it. That's why many worlds is deterministic. It takes the output of a deterministic function and says "that entire thing is real, that entire thing happens"
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    my bad, someone claimed that? People are just chopping off their willies to look like Allen Rickman in Dogma?
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    a deterministic function is a function that gives the same output given the same input. The Schrödinger equation outputs probability clouds of configurations based on inputs of probability clouds of configurations. Given the same input, it gives the same output, which is why it's deterministic.

    Have you googled if it's deterministic? What does a bit of googling tell you?

    (Ps my description of the input and output is not exactly correct, but it's close enough to correct for casual conversation, and still completely correct that given the same input it gives the same output)
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    what is "it"? The "it" that you understand isn't deterministic.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    I don't think it is. I think it's just fine that one of us is me and one of us is you, and I don't think it makes sense to ask "why am I me and not you?". If I was you, I would just be you, it wouldn't be me at all.

    And the same thing is true of your many worlds question.

    You understand that the Schrödinger equation is deterministic tight? And that many worlds is just the idea that the Schrödinger equation continues to evolve the wave function with no collapse?
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    considering creation of a neo vagina is standard transition surgery so you're clearly out of your depth.LuckyR

    Idk what exactly you mean by "standard", but it should be noted that that kind of surgery is actually on the rare side.
  • Our choices are never free from determinants, constraints and consequences
    They just don't want to be tortured by wanting this important, objectively good thing that they can't have.Patterner

    Yeah

    If they managed to never think about their health again, then were offered the new medical cure...?Patterner

    Well of course they'd take it, but they can't spend their lives just daydreaming about a miracle
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    and how would someone detect that difference? How could WE detect that difference? How do you know this isn't our second time through these lives, and we have already switched places?
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    Are you sure that's the answer? Doesn't that pre suppose that you have some kind of pre-existent identity with which to flip heads?

    The universe in which you're you and I'm me is identical to the universe in which I'm you and you're me - so identical in fact that I posit it's most likely correct to say that the very concept that I could be you and you could be me is probably incoherent.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    You may be able to, but I cannot understand why Many Worlds is deterministic for the reason I said -- why am I in the up-world and not the down-world? What is the deterministic law that makes it such that I experience this world I am in?Moliere

    That's an indexical problem. The answer to that is not a problem for many worlds, it's a problem for ANY multi-consciouness existence, even if many worlds is not true. Why are you you and not me? If you can answer that question coherently, you can also answer why you're this version of you in MWI and not some other version of you.

    And the other version of you is wondering the same thing - why is he that version, instead of the version you are?

    Imagine putting a conscious being inside my dice program. By the time you roll the dice twice, there's now a person who has seen a 1 and a 1, and ap erson who has seen a 1 and a 2, etc.. all the way to 6 and a 6.

    Now you run the program once and the guy who sees a 1 and a 3 wonders aloud, "why am I this one and not the one that saw a 6/6?" and the guy who sees 6/6 says "Wow! Two sixes in a row! I'm so lucky!"

    And every time you run the program from scratch, you see it again: the guy who sees a 1 and a 3 wonders aloud, "why am I this one and not the one that saw a 6/6?" and the guy who sees 6/6 says "Wow! Two sixes in a row! I'm so lucky!"

    Now you know there's nothing particularly lucky about the 6/6 guy, right? Not from your perspective. From your perspective, outside the program, that's a natural, inevitable consequence of the program running - every time you roll the dice twice, there will ALWAYS be a guy who saw 6 and then 6, and that guy will ALWAYS say "Wow! Two sixes in a row! I'm so lucky!".

    And the first guys question is kinda weird too. There's no reason why he's the one who saw 1 and 3 instead of some other one, that question assumes he COULD HAVE seen something else, in some ontologically strong sense of "could", but the reality is his consciousness was in some sense created the moment that window split into the dice roll of 3. He's the one who saw 1 and 3 because he was invented at that moemnt to be the one that saw 1 and 3. He is almost by definition, the version of that consciousness that sees 1 and 3. If he saw something else, he'd just... be somethig else.

    So can you answer why you're you and not me? Can you tell me why I'm me and not you? And can you try to apply that answer to many worlds versions of yourself?

    ---

    I just realized, it might first be worth clarifying, do you understand why MWI is deterministic if we set aside the problem of conscious experience? Like if you have an MWI-flavor world but just without any experience happening in it, can you accept that THAT world is deterministic?
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    we're not talking about if many worlds is true or not, just what the consequences of it would be and why it's considered deterministic. Right? You can understand why many worlds is deterministic separately from questioning if it's true or not.

    It can be deterministic and also just not the right interpretation, not matching reality.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    "does the same thing every time" isn't what I said with respect to different kinds of events.Moliere

    I have no idea what you're trying to say with this. You asked me how many worlds is deterministic, I tried to give you a visualization to help you see it

    Many worlds is analogous to my dice example.

    Another way to explain it: In the many worlds view, the Schrödinger equation is king. The Schrödinger equation evolves the wave function deterministically, and - unlike some other interpretations - in many worlds the wave function never collapses, which means it keeps getting evolved by the Schrödinger equation forever.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    I'm struggling to see how many-worlds can be interpreted as deterministic,Moliere
    If I had a computer program where you press a button, and it rolls a dice, and you see a random number between 1 and 6 afterward, that would be indeterministic in a sense, right?

    Now what if I had a computer program where you press a button, and it rolls a dice, and then it deletes the original window and spawns 6 new windows, one for each dice side? And then you press the button again and for each of those 6 windows, it spawns another 6 windows, so now there's 36 windows, and in the first window the history is a roll of a 1 and then a 1, and the second window has a history of a 1 and a 2, ... all the way to the 36th window which is a 6 and a 6?

    And then you close the program down and run it again and it happens the exact same way every time.

    Would you think that program, with a new window for every possible roll, is indeterministic? After all, it does the same thing every time.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    That's the same as asking "why am I me and not you?" What do you think of that question?
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    don't know why you'd claim our particular universe evolves deterministicallyMoliere

    I wasn't making a statement about our universe, you asked me for a scenario in which something would be true. It's a hypothetical to answer your question.

    But qm is only a counter example depending on interpretation - you brought up many worlds, many worlds is deterministic
  • Our choices are never free from determinants, constraints and consequences
    someone with a chronic illness may spend a lot of their time envying people with health, may spend hours each day in maladaptive daydreams imagining they were more healthy. Eventually they may realise that what they're doing isn't the best way for them to live, and they may choose to chase a more Buddhist approach - it's the Buddhists who say that want is the source of suffering, right? So they may become interested more in acceptance of their health and body and life as it is, rather than wanting more of it, more of what other people have.
  • Our choices are never free from determinants, constraints and consequences
    I guess I'm just not sure of how you're using the word "will". If you don't use the word, does it change the meaning?
    "You want to not want something."
    "You will to not want something."
    Patterner

    Without looking into the deep deep library of philosophical writings, I would say "want" is something kinda passive, and "will" is when you have a want and you actually do something about it.

    Passively wanting to stop smoking is one thing, but actively taking steps to counter your addiction is another. That's the difference between want and will, to me, speaking semi-casually.

    We don't want to not want health.

    I can <kinda> probably think of a counter example, and would bet that my counter-example exists in reality. You want to hear it?
  • Our choices are never free from determinants, constraints and consequences
    yeah maybe it's particularly rare to entirely destroy the want just through will.

    Doesn't mean you can't want not to want something, can't will not to want something, even if it might be true that that's not always achievable.

    And yes it does come down to competing wants.
  • Our choices are never free from determinants, constraints and consequences
    you started with "seems to me that's not willing not to want the addiction". I don't think I agree with that opening sentence. You are willing not to want something.

    I wouldn't phrase it as "willing not to want the addiction", the addiction is the want, so if someone's addicted to cigarettes it would be "willing not to want cigarettes".
  • Our choices are never free from determinants, constraints and consequences
    choosing them over the other want, to the point that you.. maybe... want to destroy the want? And then act to destroy the want? And then sometimes succeed?

    All these question marks are making me sound very sassy. Let me say it without all the sass.

    Many people who overcome addiction literally want not to want some of their wants, and destroy those wants through deliberate action.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    How then, using this terminology, does determinism not imply the PSR? What is the deterministic scenario in which the PSR is false?Moliere

    The universe we live in happens to evolve deterministically, but there's no particular reason for, say, the physical constants or the starting conditions of the universe. They just are what they are with no underlying reason.
  • Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply Determinism?
    Suppose the many-worlds interpretation -- is "It was down because you're in the down-electron universe, whereas another version of you is in the up-electron universe" a sufficient explanation?Moliere

    Yes

    Because ironically, in the many worlds there's a single state of affairs in the end with a complete explanation.

    "Single state of affairs? In many worlds?" I hear you ask. Yes. Find out why in the next episode.