Moderation Questions
The last iteration of the moderation discussion thread was a complete disaster. Numerous attempts to keep it on topic fa
I don't mean anything like that. it's the skeptical gap. We sustain a model of the world in our brains neural net using various feedback mechanisms. That model is not a perfect or direct representation of the external reality. When we see something it is both interpreted using that model and updates that model.
The perception is not identical to the thing being perceived. But I think we would want to say that the reason for this gap is incomplete information. Our brain is pretty good at only focusing on the things that help us and discarding the things that don’t, and using heuristics that can help us survive. These don’t track perfectly to reality because there are other considerations.
Someone who filters out more background noise might find it easier to go to sleep in 2025. Similarly, if they go out into the wild, they might not be as scared of random noises in the bushes because they might not notice as many. On the other hand, we transport that same person 40k ybp and they might die because what they thought was just some rustling and so ignored it actually turned out to be a tiger.
These are the sorts of things I imagine when we talk about modeling the world, how we interpret the information that’s in the background. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the information changes from person to person, it just means that the way we’re stitching it together can be different. It’s the same reason why someone might hear a statistic and make all sorts of unfounded inferences and another person might think nothing follows from it.
That doesn't address my point. I have no problem that there might have been some census right before Jesus was born that we don;t have a record of. It's that there is no record of any census in Roman history that required people to travel to their patrilineal place of origin.
While we are likely only getting a heavily redacted account of it, an Angel of the Lord spoke the pertinent details to Joseph personally:
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.
20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:
25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS[.[/i] -Matthew 1:18-25
(See also Luke 1:26-38)
That's my claim. In support of that I'm saying, light as we experience it as luminosity is not a property of the physical universe. It's a property of our perceptual apparatus. Luminosity is what our mind uses to render and simulate that data as what we see.
This, surely, is what is called 'trivially true'. Light, as a form of electromagnetic radiation, existed long before humans were there to perceive it and will continue to exist long after we're gone. (And we're not here for long, you know.)
This, surely, is what is called 'trivially true'. Light, as a form of electromagnetic radiation, existed long before humans were there to perceive it and will continue to exist long after we're gone. (And we're not here for long, you know.)
The em is filtered and rendered as the electrical impulses the brain receives, which for all intents could be zeros and ones. Whether that maps to physical reality or not is completely irrelevant to my point: Our experience of the world is a simulation of data.
While we are likely only getting a heavily redacted account of it, an Angel of the Lord spoke the pertinent details to Joseph personally:
Either Mathew has access to someone else's dream from 100 years ago that earlier christians don't seem to know about. Or he made it up.
Not really, no. A simulation is the attempt to imitate an observed phenomena or process. For example you can make an orrery to simulate the motions of the planets. A dream is not made to imitate or model anything, it is as far as we know just various scenes and emotions of varying type. Dreaming of moving planets would not make that dream a simulation akin to an orrery.
Of course, one could say that the "simulation hypothesis" is poorly named because if the universe as some sort of large model made to run virtual beings and objects, that does not mean it is necessarily imitating anything. It could be something more akin to a game or art, or some kind of concept that does not make sense to us in the same sense that an object outside the computer does not make sense to the computer unless interpreted in a language it understands.
So in a way you do score a point regardless. We could call the "simulation hypothesis" for the "dream hypothesis" and it would make just as much sense, but of course it would sound a lot less "hard sciencey" and more like something out of a fluffy new age pamphlet. That would make it a lot less appealing for pop scientists to impress the audience with in podcasts and essays.
Like most metaphysical debate, none of this really matters. We are talking about things we can not know using words we do know, which might not be enough. Which means we do not even know if we could be able to talk about the thing we do not know. It is interesting in a "woah dude" kind of way, but that is about it.
People do this with quantum mechanics all the time. The various interpretations are just there to help us make sense of the underlying maths using familiar language and concepts, but they are no more than that; the theory is the underlying maths and that is what makes the predictions, the theory is not the various interpretations, or even worse, simplified versions of those interpretations.
People do this with quantum mechanics all the time. The various interpretations are just there to help us make sense of the underlying maths using familiar language and concepts, but they are no more than that; the theory is the underlying maths and that is what makes the predictions, the theory is not the various interpretations, or even worse, simplified versions of thos
I certainly agree with that. The best language for quantum mechanics is math. As of yet our everyday language is so tied in meaning that reflects causality or dependency, that it becomes tricky to talk about many of the phenomena and observations quantum physics tackle.
Quantum entanglement is the archetypical example. Particles interact. When we measure them this interaction yields a consequence. Many of the things we deem necessary for consequences to occur in classical thinking (existing states, time, distance) seem irrelevant.
Future generations might have it easier, as education, language and intuition shifts to reflect new paradigms in science. Well, at least if we stop dumbing ourselves down.
When you have nothing to say, it's best to say exactly that, chez.
The perception is not identical to the thing being perceived. But I think we would want to say that the reason for this gap is incomplete information. Our brain is pretty good at only focusing on the things that help us and discarding the things that don’t, and using heuristics that can help us survive. These don’t track perfectly to reality because there are other consideratio
I wouldn't agree that the gap is down to incomplete information but we can leave that aside as we both agree the information is incomplete.
How well the brain models reality is debatable; but to the extent it is kept coherent with reality is dependent on processing the information received. Our minds then work with our model rather than directly with reality which sometimes results in painful bumps with reality. These models are private - we cannot mind meld, we have to communicate to share what is in our minds with each other. The difficulty of this sometimes even when we try hard (rare around these parts) can give a glimpse of how different our models are from each other
I let you know if it ever happens, mate
The energy of a photon or the frequency/amplitude of an electromagnetic wave are objective phenomena, though, whether you choose to call that "luminosity" or anything else you like.
Right. What we call luminosity or color has to map to some real objective feature of the light like amplitude or frequwncy that exists. It cannot be mass or charge because light does not have those.
The em is filtered and rendered as the electrical impulses the brain receives, which for all intents could be zeros and ones. Whether that maps to physical reality or not is completely irrelevant to my point: Our experience of the world is a simulation of data.
I'd put it a bit differently but yes our mental imagery, experience etc of the world is of our internal model of reality which is kept in line with reality by feedback (information) from reality (assuming non-idealism etc). That model in action could be called a simulation.
That's ignoring conscious experience which is a hard problem. Everything above will be done by AI/Alife but will it be conscious or does that requires something 'magic'
I certainly agree with that. The best language for quantum mechanics is math. As of yet our everyday language is so tied in meaning that reflects causality or dependency, that it becomes tricky to talk about many of the phenomena and observations quantum physics tackle. Quantum entanglement is the archetypical example. Particles interact. When we measure them this interacti
It's taken far too far. Maths is the best language but the physics involves modeling which is where the equations come from and are crucially tested against. Reality is the master of science not some set of equations. The idea of 'just calculate' was because people were stuck with classical objections in the face of overwhelming evidence for QM. It is not an excuse not to think and it is more intuitive these days because we grew up with it.
There's a bit of irony because in general we have a problem with people converting to maths problem far too easily. Then doing the maths is trivial and comforting compared to the hard messyness of dealing with how well it models the problem.
