To the first question, not in the least. This discussion is also superdetermined, including the illusory sense of a "me" who "chose" to write these comments.
To the second question, yes. It's beyond comprehension and wondrous. It's maximum novelty and total absurdity.
Might be worth it to brush up on computationally reducible phenomenon and computationally irreducible phenomenon. Breaking determined systems into these constituent parts lets you conjecture with respect to intelligent agents. Critically it shows that arguments from observed inability to successfully model the self are evidence for, not evidence against, the presence of an intelligent agent. The enlightenment view misattributes the evidence for agents as evidence against agents.
An anti-enlightenment koan could be: The student came to the master and asked, “Why are tigers green?” The master responded, “The deer they are hunting can’t see orange.” The student then asked, “It is not therefore it is? How mysterious and inscrutable your answers!” But from that moment onwards the master was de-enlightened.
I think it's the opposite. You need a "God of the gaps" in the form of a "person" (actually a collection of phenomena. + the phenomena of identification with these) to explain free will and agency, which defies experimental evidence.
The comment that superdeterminism requires a higher-order determinism, which itself requires a yet-higher-order determinism... I think you're confusing it with a causal mindset. If the universe is effectively a recording, why does it need any ultimate cause? Causal thinking would only make sense from a perspective within that recording.
Of course we want to know "why is any of this here?" But what if the ultimate question doesn't actually have an answer?
Indeed. Feynman was extremely good at getting to the heart of the matter with simple and precise language and no pretensions. This is why so many important ideas of a philosophical nature can be found in his works.
But conversely he had little patience with obfuscating the heart of the matter with unnecessary complications, overly complex or vague language, or pretension of any kind. But philosophers do all of those.
If you read Paul Graham's essay, which I linked to, his proposal for how to fix philosophy is to focus on usefulness. For exactly the reason you stated.
Feynman attempted to make his speech simple, clear, and precise. It is almost certainly a mistake to read subtlety into his language.
Besides, he expressed his negative opinions on philosophy and philosophers in many ways, on many occasions. He very clearly was on the side of those saying that philosophers SHOULD be ignored by anyone who wished to learn science.
I think it's the same thing. The future energy state of the cartridge is that it's in the chamber, so it gets sucked up. It's problematic though, because the direction of gravity doesn't change.
The comment advocated that scientists should profess to be philosophers. Why? Presumably because they are engaged in a field of study that philosophers have claimed. Furthermore the author is bothered that they don't. Why? Likely because if scientists acknowledged their status as philosophers, that would raise the status of philosophers.
And so the meat of my comment was illustrating by anecdote that the fact that philosophers have claimed a field, does not mean that they contribute meaningfully to it. Nor that people interested in the field should pay attention to philosophers. Nor that they should call themselves philosophers. Therefore, despite the claim that philosophers lay to topics like "epistemology", scientists SHOULD NOT profess to be philosophers. And anyone who claims otherwise should be laughed at.
Now why did I make my comment?
It is because I saw the comment as being part of the genre of people who attempt to raise the status of their field by laying an unwarranted claim to the accomplishments of others. This offends me. Philosophy and philosophers do not deserve credit for the accomplishments of science. And should not demand that scientists give philosophy that credit by relabeling themselves as philosophers.
With all that said, hopefully you'll better see how I saw my response as responsive to the comment. And hopefully you'll understand why I did not find it a good comment.
> The comment advocated that scientists should profess to be philosophers.
This context is helpful, thanks.
I didn't advocate anything. I said that it bothers me is that (some) scientists profess not to be philosophers. This is because, in fact, scientists, like all people, actually are philosophers.
> It is because I saw the comment as being part of the genre of people who attempt to raise the status of their field
My field is not philosophy.
> by laying an unwarranted claim to the accomplishments of others.
Neither did I make any claims in my original comment. You seem to have extrapolated quite a lot from a single sentence.
> Philosophy and philosophers do not deserve credit for the accomplishments of science.
The origin of science is obviously philosophical; indeed, Western science is theological in origin (and so is Eastern if you want to broaden your definition of theology a bit). It is equally obvious, if perhaps a bit ironic, that modern science has distanced itself from its earlier foundations.
To the extent that all people are considered philosophers, the claim that person X is a philosopher is meaningless, and therefore is a statement that is not worth making. Just as I do not constantly go around identifying myself with, "human, primate, born on planet Earth, circling the star Sol, in the Milky Way galaxy..." Those statements are true but provide no useful information to anyone distinguishing me from anyone else.
To the extent that "philosopher" is identified with the practice of philosophy as discussed and practiced in philosophy departments, it is a meaningful identifier. But also *SHOULD NOT* be applied to most scientists. For similar reasons, the historical theological roots of early scientists does not make modern fields like chemistry into branches of theology.
As for science distancing itself from its earlier foundations, there is nothing ironic about it. In fact that act is essential to how science as a field operates. The purpose of a scientific education is to indoctrinate the student with the norms, values and knowledge of current scientific paradigms that will allow the student to operate within, extend, challenge, and hopefully improve those paradigms. Exposing the student to the details of outdated approaches only to explain why they became outdated is an activity of limited use, and therefore we strictly limit how many such examples students must learn. And even for those we do not explain previous ideas in detail. What purpose is there in explaining to students who must learn inertia, Aristotle's ideas that all things naturally come to rest? Why would we bother explaining the history of attempts to find mechanisms for and explanations of Noah's Flood to students who are about to learn about the Ice Ages and that Noah's Flood didn't happen?
The first clear description that I know of for this process comes from Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. At the time he was a physicist who had developed an interest in the history of science. He implicitly assumed a shared context with the reader. People who have mastered a hard science generally have that context. I have that context, and found the book delightful.
Unfortunately after writing that book, he spent a lot of time responding to creative misunderstandings of his work from philosophers who lacked that context. I found little value in those criticisms, or in his responses. Yet another example of how I've found a lack of value in philosophy as practiced by philosophers.
> To the extent that all people are considered philosophers, the claim that person X is a philosopher is meaningless
If ideas had no consequences, this might be true; but since ideas do have consequences, this is probably not true.
> For similar reasons, the historical theological roots of early scientists does not make modern fields like chemistry into branches of theology.
A theologian might disagree with you about this. How would you go about demonstrating that this opinion is incorrect?
> As for science distancing itself from its earlier foundations, there is nothing ironic about it. In fact that act is essential to how science as a field operates.
Scientific progress suggests that we produce more theoretically plausible interpretations of phenomena. As we do that, we often undercut or discard the axioms that produce these new theories: that is what is ironic.
> If ideas had no consequences, this might be true; but since ideas do have consequences, this is probably not true.
Let's start with the idea, "If all A's are B's, then there is no information contained in 'x is a B' that is not also contained in 'x is an A'."
It's a pretty important idea. It goes back to Aristotle. Anyone who professes to think that philosophy is important should be familiar with it.
Its consequence is that if all humans are philosophers, then there is no information we can extract from the label "philosopher" that is not already contained in the label "human". And therefore calling individual humans philosophers would therefore convey no useful information.
But attempting to apply generic labels IS useful for a well-known fallacy - the fallacy of equivocation. This is where the same term is used with two different meanings in different parts of the same argument. For example an ontological argument can produce a generic definition of God, then argue for its existence. And then proceeds to argue for a Christian God on the basis of characteristics we implicitly associate with the idea of God, DESPITE those characteristics not being part of the definition just used.
Therefore the attempt to apply unnecessary labels can lead us into logical fallacies. Such as arguing that everyone should be called a philosopher, then arguing about how philosophers should behave, then arguing that everyone should behave that way. And failing to note that the definition of "philosopher" changed between the first and second parts of the argument.
Given that the most likely consequence of calling everyone a philosopher is falling into logical fallacies, we should not assert a trivial definition of philosopher such that everyone is a philosopher.
> A theologian might disagree with you about this. How would you go about demonstrating that this opinion is incorrect?
I would argue from the meaning of the words used.
Theology is the study of the nature of the divine. To the extent that a scientist believes that they are revealing the nature of the divine from their study of the natural world, they are engaged in theology. However to the extent that the scientist makes no attempt to draw conclusions of the nature of the divine from their studies of the natural world, they are NOT engaged in theology.
Modern chemists seldom try to draw any conclusions either way about the nature of the divine from their work. Therefore the study of modern chemistry is not a branch of theology.
To the extent that theologians attempt to draw conclusions of the nature of the divine from chemistry, those theologians must be engaged in theology. But modern chemists will generally agree that those attempts are not part of the field of chemistry. And so, again, modern chemistry and theology are separated.
> Scientific progress suggests that we produce more theoretically plausible interpretations of phenomena. As we do that, we often undercut or discard the axioms that produce these new theories: that is what is ironic.
And what axioms would those be?
Science did not begin to become science until it threw away a lot of Aristotle's bad ideas. Other ideas of his were not thrown out, but have generally proven to be irrelevant. The logic used in practice by science owes rather more to people like George Boole, Thomas Bayes and Ronald Fisher than Aristotle. And students are more likely to encounter said logic in a mathematics course than a philosophy one.
That said, it is trivially true that the way that science is carried out demonstrates that they have adopted an implicit philosophy. But that philosophy was mostly developed by scientists themselves, and I've never seen it accurately described by philosophers.
This is not to say that philosophers have not tried. For example Karl Popper attempted to opine on how science must be done, and came up with his famous falsifiability criterion. This theory is laughably ...
> Let's start with the idea, "If all A's are B's, then there is no information contained in 'x is a B' that is not also contained in 'x is an A'."
All humans are primates, but not all primates are human: the two ideas are not interchangeable. I'm not equivocating; I'm simply saying that it bothers me when people who implicitly philosophize think or say that they are not.
> That said, it is trivially true that the way that science is carried out demonstrates that they have adopted an implicit philosophy. But that philosophy was mostly developed by scientists themselves, and I've never seen it accurately described by philosophers.
That a truth is trivial does not make it self-evident.
Methodological naturalism is not the same thing as philosophical naturalism, but many people (scientists and otherwise) conflate the two. Whether the philosophy is true or not is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.
That someone who implicitly philosophizes says that they are not philosophers? To me that is no more bothersome than someone who speaks English telling me that they are not English majors.
Are you bothered that people like me do not value studying philosophers for the purpose of philosophizing better? But you have not made a case for why I should value it. I have made a case for why I don't value it, but you have not responded to or acknowledged much of it.
However I'll try again.
I maintain that the single most influential work of Greek ethical philosophy is Aesop's Fables. It is more read, more quoted, and its advice is more followed than everything else from ancient Greece, combined. Aesop, if he actually lived, could not have studied Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the other famous philosophers for the simple reason that he predated them. But imagine that Aesop had the opportunity to study and cite them. Would Aesop have been more effective and influential had he done so? Instead of telling relatable stories about animals?
Obviously not! Aesop's philosophizing was made more effective BY his lack of concern for the norms of classical philosophy!
I do not think that this is an isolated example. Norms of behavior are more easily established and absorbed through practical stories than abstract debate. This is as applicable whether it is Aesop instilling a moral about hard work with a story about ants and a grasshopper, or Feynman instilling a moral about the necessity of careful replication experiments with a story about a cargo cult whose planes don't land.
It is too bad that few in psychology paid any attention to Feynman. They could have saved themselves decades of wasted work. But in time the replication crisis brought home the point that their failure to absorb scientific norms was resulting in fraudulent fields which followed the forms of scientific research while producing results that nobody should trust. But I digress.
> That a truth is trivial does not make it self-evident.
This comment is hilariously true when it comes to how mathematicians use the word "trivial".
That said, I believe that you understand and agree with my point that scientists have adopted an implicit philosophy.
> Whether the philosophy is true or not is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.
And here I have to violently agree. If, in fact, you're concerned with Truth with a capital T, then science really isn't the field for you. Because science has learned the hard way not to try to answer that question. So go off and debate it with the philosophers.
But if you wish to understand the world, science has a lot to commend it. There is a necessary chunk of implicit philosophizing that you must absorb to learn it. But you will not find it taught in philosophy courses, nor will studying philosophy help you to absorb it.
> That said, I believe that you understand and agree with my point that scientists have adopted an implicit philosophy.
Before getting to the main body, this was precisely the point I was making in my original response. That is exactly the point. The rest of this is probably wasted electrons, but they're relatively cheap and I've spent them already.
> What exactly bothers you?
That's a good question with which I've wrestled. A couple introductory notes:
Despite the terseness of my replies, I do try to make them thoughtful. My time is limited, and I have found that less is more when writing. I have read what you wrote, but yes, I'm a bit choosy in responding because the content easily spreads well beyond the original intent of my response and my time boundaries.
Apologies to Pascal, but I'd have written you a shorter comment if I had the time.
My intent was to correct a few assumptions that you made about me based on the comment—not to convince you that my perspective is correct or to argue that the term philosopher should not be restricted to those who are educated in the field, or even that scientists should be trained in philosophy (although I think the basics of how we approach the human condition would be useful).
None of the following may apply to you personally; I don't assume that they do, and indeed given our conversation suppose that most of them don't.
So, why would it bother me that scientists profess not to be philosophers?
1. Because all people are philosophers (or theologians, or both). That this is trivially true does not mean that people recognize this fact about themselves; scientists are no exception.
2. The scientific method is not a neutral approach to acquiring knowledge; some people suppose that it is, and in so doing they're making a philosophical statement, not a scientific one.
3. The application of that knowledge is obviously not always neutral, and it can have profound consequences.
4. We should generally be more aware of our own lack of neutrality.
5. Science is gradually (or not-so-gradually) replacing our myths and today serves much the same role in answering our questions about who we are, where we came from, where we're doing, and how we're getting there. In other words, science for many people is becoming philosophy (or theology, or both).
6. When scientists fail to recognize this, they may exacerbate the problems we face trying to answer those questions. They could help avoid this, perhaps, by understanding that they are the modern equivalent of high priests (whether they will or no).
This is not to say that science has no role in answering life's big questions; indeed, it does and probably should. But we cannot go from is to ought, or at least history teaches us that doing so is not conducive to human flourishing. Neither is the transition from knowledge to wisdom immediate or obvious. I know you agree with these statements.
The difficulty I have is that many people elide these distinctions with upturned nose, not realizing that they are turning science into scientism. This might be an avoidable outcome.
1. I cook food for myself, but do not call myself a chef. I have managed to not kill my lawn, but do not call myself a farmer. Why then should the fact that I have opinions about philosophical topics and the existence of God qualify me to be a philosopher and theologian?
2. The fault for believing that the scientific method is a neutral approach to acquiring knowledge lies with those who believe it, and not scientists. For their part, scientists tell the story of the drunk who is crawling on his hands and knees around a streetlamp. When asked what he is doing he replies, "I'm looking for my wallet." When asked where the wallet was dropped he replies, "By those bushes." When asked why he's not by the bushes he replies, "But the light is better here!"
Scientists are very clear that they are looking where the light is good. Instead of where the answers to the most important questions seem likely to be found. Most are also clear that doing otherwise would stop them from being scientists.
3. Scientists are seldom focused on potential applications, usually can't predict what they may be, and when applications appear, are usually not in control of them. So while I agree that applications are not always neutral, I do not agree that scientists should be doing anything differently because of it.
4. We should be aware of our lack of neutrality, but I see this as advice that is best directed at influential non-scientists. And not advice that is actionable by scientists.
5. There is a long history of people cherry-picking what they want out of science, and using it to advocate for whatever positions they may hold. History shows that the support, opposition, or indifference of scientists does not much impact this. You may verify by looking at the history of Social Darwinism, Christian Science, Scientology, or Ram Dass' invocations of quantum mechanics. Given this history, why would you believe that scientists can much impact what non-scientists say and do in the name of science?
6. To the extent that scientists are the modern equivalent of high priests, they are learning what the priests have always known. They only have power to the extent that they say things that the public wishes to hear. Which winds up being less power than it would appear.
Here is an illustrative example. Jesus told us that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. And yet, this very night, millions of his followers will pray for the very wealth that Jesus warned against!
I bring this up not to argue for a specific theological interpretation, but to make a point. Suppose that a preacher at a megachurch were to decide that Jesus was right, and this should be the subject of every Sunday sermon until his flock properly followed Jesus' advice. I predict that his flock would soon find new churches with preachers that they prefer listening to. And the preacher who thought he shaped the minds of thousands, would find nobody listening to him.
Scientists are in a similar position. Except that they are trying to follow knowledge where the light is good. They neither wanted nor are suited to a role as preacher. And so they properly avoid stepping into the role, let alone stepping into it for the purpose of following the agenda that you wish that they would follow.
You somehow believe that there would be value in pressuring scientists to behave otherwise. I don't.
> The one showing hubris here is you, tossing around technical terms don't admit you don't understand.
Hence the disclaimer. I just think this stuff is fascinating. If you're interested, this is the article that originally got me thinking about these ideas as they relate to the flow of time: "Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math" [0]. It's effectively an appeal to intuitionist mathematics and a rejection of constructivism, where - simplified - every particle since the big bang can be assigned some "number" that describes its position on its world line, with a precision that is finite, but always increasing - and it's this increase in precision from which emerges the "flow" of time. If you ctrl+f the article for "continuum," you'll see some better constructed arguments for what I'm trying to argue, e.g.:
> Moreover, the continuum can’t be cleanly divided into two parts consisting of all numbers less than ½ and all those greater than or equal to ½. “If you try to cut the continuum in half, this number x is going to stick to the knife, and it won’t be on the left or on the right,” said Posy. “The continuum is viscous; it’s sticky.”
The impression I'm left with is that the difference between constructivist vs. intuitionist mathematics (which rejects the law of the excluded middle) has some parallels to the difference between eternalism (there is a past, present and future) vs. presentism (there is only the present).
As a layman, I just can't help but notice the same patterns come up again and again when looking at unresolved problems between classical and quantum mechanics, namely those that lie at the boundary between the continuous and discrete. FWIW, I asked ChatGPT for some unresolved mathematical problems that might relate to this, and it came up with: The Continuum Hypothesis, The Axiom of Choice, and The Riemann Hypothesis, all of which it admitted are possibly impossible to prove because they're effectively unfalsifiable. (I also showed it this entire thread, and it agreed with your critique of my arguments, but also that every argument in the thread is unfalsifiable - and then it pointed me to the Boltzmann Brain paradox).
Scientist isn't a job title or a qualification, it's a word for someone doing science. Some philosophers working in quantum foundations deserve to be called scientists, as much as any theorist from the physics department in the field. Price may not be in this category, you certainly would know better.
That's not the reason why the centre of the universe is undefined.
By analogy, while spherical coordinates are arbitrary, latitude is defined. Arbitrary, but defined.
But the centre of the Earth has an undefined latitude, and a topological subspace consisting of just the surface of the Earth can't hand-wave past that by pointing out that's just a coordinate singularity that can be safely ignored — there isn't a center of the Earth anywhere in that subspace. If the universe is flat and finite (looping), this problem still exists.
And if the universe is unbounded (infinite), that has a different problem because you can't properly define a median of an infinite set[0], so no center exists.
If it just stops suddenly after a certain amount of space, then we get to have a center, but there's no sign of that.
[0] I think. Infinity is easy to get messed up with.
Hard to summarize, but it's well worth anyone interested in this topic. There's a good bit where he ties the sleeping beauty thought experiment with Boltzmann Brains and consciousness; it blew my mind trying to understand the whole thing.
Wouldn't questioning those pre-existing notions be the first step towards constructing such a machine? It sounds silly to dismiss the idea time could go backwards because we don't have any machines that work that way, since that typically how all ideas work before we implement them.
The regular arrow of time from the human perspective, "leaks" changes into the future. The future is constantly being changed by the past.
You can measure those changes by many ways, the 2nd. law of thermodynamics is everywhere just to make sure you see this happening across everything.
So, probably there are other non-discovered underlying mechanisms in the reality that are already signaling changes from the future "leaking" into the past, changing the past right infront of us, without us noticing it.
A probably omnipresent mechanism for observing the future changing the past, valid in the whole cone of light visible to us, is the probability law.
If you have 10 millions of possible events in a probability, one of them is the exact thing it will happen in the future, hence the information of what happens in the future is right here, existing in the past.
Yeah, you can say how would the nature could use this information without powerful processors predicting branches trillions of times per second on Earth right now?
Well, the brain is a pattern predictor, quite several parts of the brain are firmly attached to the physics of the universe, biochemically but what if the pattern prediction mechanisms in the brain are actually an adaptation of the evolution, just like wings to fly, but with those mechanisms the brain uses probability to "see" information from the future, and here in the "present", it changes the past (from the perspective of the future created originally from the past), if the brain "chooses now" to do something different that what originally created the future it "saw" by analizing patterns, essentially evaluating probabilities.
So the Probability Law would be a kind of Inverted 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics.
It would work perfectly as law of the universe: from the future to the past, the revered time of arrow, one single event created "a" future, but from the regular arrow of time, there would a range of probable future outcomes which you cannot precisely say it has "1" (100%) probability of ocurring, right to exact moment till the future becomes the present.
And it was right there all the time, something obvious infront of everybody in the world, like electricity (which was suspected by many across thousands of years, but just "discovered" recently).
Yes, but like you said, that requires re-drawing your boundaries. It doesn't really defy the direction of entropy, it only appears that way from having changed scope.
Just commented about interpreting the Probability Law as sort of "Inverted 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics".
I'll expand here how if the arrow of time actually doesn't exist, the future could change the past without breaking our - current - understanding of physics (tragiclly because we will probably have maybe hundred of years till we change our minds about what are the properties of the universe).
In a range or probabilities of one event, one of the probabilities will always be the one is going to actually happen. Closer to the event to occur the most certain you can be about which one of those, could be the one that will happen.
Here's the catch, you have to change your mind a bit, in our current understanding of physics, the information of the future event which has not happen yet, already exists here in the past for that event.
Now, if you know - and you know - the outcome of an event, you most certainly will be able to choose if you go along that path, or you choose to change the future event to something else. Whoalá, the future changed the past.
Brains of earth continously do this, every second of our entire lives, animal brains do this too, almost all life on Earth has some neurological, physiological, chemical predictive mechanism in place.
An example, you're about to walk across a street, you see a car coming, now your brain "predicts" you'll be hit by that car if you just keep walking, you stop walking to avoid certain death, done, the future changed the past. The information - really close to 100% of probability of death - extracted by the brain from the sheer reality of the universe, allowed you to survive.
And no current understanding of physics got harmed anywhere along the way of the future changing the past.
I think the actual assumption is that we are currently seeing just one direction of the arrow of time, but if there is no arrow of time, maybe we are already seeing the future and not realizing it is the future.
I commented further in this line of though in another comments, about a probable (ironically), "Inverted 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics" of sorts, which it would be basically just the Law of Probability, interpreted from the point of view of not having an actual arrow of time and the fact that we have - all the time, again ironically - the information of what happens in the future (the one probability in the range which ends being the right one, actually ocurring).
Yeah, I know it would be another Law, and the universe would upside down once again for us the poor meatbags, but we were already in this position several times, discovering the electricity, quantum mechanics, relativiy, you name it.
Mmm, not really unpredictable, it is easy for thought exercises to avoid the dirty real world, but in the real world, Large Language Models have recently proven that many quite difficult abstract probability exercises, when taken to the real world and applying training, can be succesfully solved well beyond our most wildly expectations of precision, speed and accuracy.
So yes, the prediction of the decision to have a ham sandwich tomorrow, for any given person is now, by the state of the art of applied mathematics and information science, a relative doable - if not plain easy - feat.
And according to some hypothesis, the brain could be doing this exactly kind of predictions, even more better than LLMs, with more accuracy/speed using way less energy.
> the prediction of the decision to have a ham sandwich tomorrow, for any given person is now, by the state of the art of applied mathematics and information science, a relative doable - if not plain easy - feat.
Sure, the LLM may be able to guess by reasoning (e.g. 'He always eats ham sandwiches for breakfast and he probably wouldn't break his routine'), the same way we could guess at another person's behaviour, but we're talking about reducing the brain into a deterministic input/output machine, which is a far larger ask.
Now if you said 'doable' that may be right in the long term, but 'easy'? Absolutely not. There's no current way to feed 'me' or 'you' into an equivalent LLM. The human brain has more axons then there are stars in the galaxy and we are nowhere close to even mapping these connections.
>The brain could be doing this exactly kind of predictions, even more better than LLMs, with more accuracy/speed using way less energy.
That's definitely an option. The fact that many of the brain's operations could be done by LLMs is a strike against the original thesis.
Indeed, the original claim treats mathematics as a modeling tool, not philosophy. Nevertheless, it is my belief that untestable hypotheses about True Reality (should it even exist) are not debatable without causing migraines of epic proportions. There's no physics without mathematics -- as physicists say, shut up and calculate.
That is a great point. The laws of thermodynamics exist as a logical consequence to fundamental statistical principles. It is statistical mechanics that gives rise to entropy, not the other way around. (hence the beautifully elegant equation S = Kb*ln(Omega) where Omega is the number of microstates)
I realize that programmers are not always good scientists. Yet some claims are absurd in ways that I now believe this phenomenon necessitates rigorous study.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadTo the second question, yes. It's beyond comprehension and wondrous. It's maximum novelty and total absurdity.
An anti-enlightenment koan could be: The student came to the master and asked, “Why are tigers green?” The master responded, “The deer they are hunting can’t see orange.” The student then asked, “It is not therefore it is? How mysterious and inscrutable your answers!” But from that moment onwards the master was de-enlightened.
The comment that superdeterminism requires a higher-order determinism, which itself requires a yet-higher-order determinism... I think you're confusing it with a causal mindset. If the universe is effectively a recording, why does it need any ultimate cause? Causal thinking would only make sense from a perspective within that recording.
Of course we want to know "why is any of this here?" But what if the ultimate question doesn't actually have an answer?
But conversely he had little patience with obfuscating the heart of the matter with unnecessary complications, overly complex or vague language, or pretension of any kind. But philosophers do all of those.
If you read Paul Graham's essay, which I linked to, his proposal for how to fix philosophy is to focus on usefulness. For exactly the reason you stated.
Besides, he expressed his negative opinions on philosophy and philosophers in many ways, on many occasions. He very clearly was on the side of those saying that philosophers SHOULD be ignored by anyone who wished to learn science.
The comment advocated that scientists should profess to be philosophers. Why? Presumably because they are engaged in a field of study that philosophers have claimed. Furthermore the author is bothered that they don't. Why? Likely because if scientists acknowledged their status as philosophers, that would raise the status of philosophers.
And so the meat of my comment was illustrating by anecdote that the fact that philosophers have claimed a field, does not mean that they contribute meaningfully to it. Nor that people interested in the field should pay attention to philosophers. Nor that they should call themselves philosophers. Therefore, despite the claim that philosophers lay to topics like "epistemology", scientists SHOULD NOT profess to be philosophers. And anyone who claims otherwise should be laughed at.
Now why did I make my comment?
It is because I saw the comment as being part of the genre of people who attempt to raise the status of their field by laying an unwarranted claim to the accomplishments of others. This offends me. Philosophy and philosophers do not deserve credit for the accomplishments of science. And should not demand that scientists give philosophy that credit by relabeling themselves as philosophers.
With all that said, hopefully you'll better see how I saw my response as responsive to the comment. And hopefully you'll understand why I did not find it a good comment.
This context is helpful, thanks.
I didn't advocate anything. I said that it bothers me is that (some) scientists profess not to be philosophers. This is because, in fact, scientists, like all people, actually are philosophers.
> It is because I saw the comment as being part of the genre of people who attempt to raise the status of their field
My field is not philosophy.
> by laying an unwarranted claim to the accomplishments of others.
Neither did I make any claims in my original comment. You seem to have extrapolated quite a lot from a single sentence.
> Philosophy and philosophers do not deserve credit for the accomplishments of science.
The origin of science is obviously philosophical; indeed, Western science is theological in origin (and so is Eastern if you want to broaden your definition of theology a bit). It is equally obvious, if perhaps a bit ironic, that modern science has distanced itself from its earlier foundations.
To the extent that "philosopher" is identified with the practice of philosophy as discussed and practiced in philosophy departments, it is a meaningful identifier. But also *SHOULD NOT* be applied to most scientists. For similar reasons, the historical theological roots of early scientists does not make modern fields like chemistry into branches of theology.
As for science distancing itself from its earlier foundations, there is nothing ironic about it. In fact that act is essential to how science as a field operates. The purpose of a scientific education is to indoctrinate the student with the norms, values and knowledge of current scientific paradigms that will allow the student to operate within, extend, challenge, and hopefully improve those paradigms. Exposing the student to the details of outdated approaches only to explain why they became outdated is an activity of limited use, and therefore we strictly limit how many such examples students must learn. And even for those we do not explain previous ideas in detail. What purpose is there in explaining to students who must learn inertia, Aristotle's ideas that all things naturally come to rest? Why would we bother explaining the history of attempts to find mechanisms for and explanations of Noah's Flood to students who are about to learn about the Ice Ages and that Noah's Flood didn't happen?
The first clear description that I know of for this process comes from Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. At the time he was a physicist who had developed an interest in the history of science. He implicitly assumed a shared context with the reader. People who have mastered a hard science generally have that context. I have that context, and found the book delightful.
Unfortunately after writing that book, he spent a lot of time responding to creative misunderstandings of his work from philosophers who lacked that context. I found little value in those criticisms, or in his responses. Yet another example of how I've found a lack of value in philosophy as practiced by philosophers.
If ideas had no consequences, this might be true; but since ideas do have consequences, this is probably not true.
> For similar reasons, the historical theological roots of early scientists does not make modern fields like chemistry into branches of theology.
A theologian might disagree with you about this. How would you go about demonstrating that this opinion is incorrect?
> As for science distancing itself from its earlier foundations, there is nothing ironic about it. In fact that act is essential to how science as a field operates.
Scientific progress suggests that we produce more theoretically plausible interpretations of phenomena. As we do that, we often undercut or discard the axioms that produce these new theories: that is what is ironic.
Let's start with the idea, "If all A's are B's, then there is no information contained in 'x is a B' that is not also contained in 'x is an A'."
It's a pretty important idea. It goes back to Aristotle. Anyone who professes to think that philosophy is important should be familiar with it.
Its consequence is that if all humans are philosophers, then there is no information we can extract from the label "philosopher" that is not already contained in the label "human". And therefore calling individual humans philosophers would therefore convey no useful information.
But attempting to apply generic labels IS useful for a well-known fallacy - the fallacy of equivocation. This is where the same term is used with two different meanings in different parts of the same argument. For example an ontological argument can produce a generic definition of God, then argue for its existence. And then proceeds to argue for a Christian God on the basis of characteristics we implicitly associate with the idea of God, DESPITE those characteristics not being part of the definition just used.
Therefore the attempt to apply unnecessary labels can lead us into logical fallacies. Such as arguing that everyone should be called a philosopher, then arguing about how philosophers should behave, then arguing that everyone should behave that way. And failing to note that the definition of "philosopher" changed between the first and second parts of the argument.
Given that the most likely consequence of calling everyone a philosopher is falling into logical fallacies, we should not assert a trivial definition of philosopher such that everyone is a philosopher.
> A theologian might disagree with you about this. How would you go about demonstrating that this opinion is incorrect?
I would argue from the meaning of the words used.
Theology is the study of the nature of the divine. To the extent that a scientist believes that they are revealing the nature of the divine from their study of the natural world, they are engaged in theology. However to the extent that the scientist makes no attempt to draw conclusions of the nature of the divine from their studies of the natural world, they are NOT engaged in theology.
Modern chemists seldom try to draw any conclusions either way about the nature of the divine from their work. Therefore the study of modern chemistry is not a branch of theology.
To the extent that theologians attempt to draw conclusions of the nature of the divine from chemistry, those theologians must be engaged in theology. But modern chemists will generally agree that those attempts are not part of the field of chemistry. And so, again, modern chemistry and theology are separated.
> Scientific progress suggests that we produce more theoretically plausible interpretations of phenomena. As we do that, we often undercut or discard the axioms that produce these new theories: that is what is ironic.
And what axioms would those be?
Science did not begin to become science until it threw away a lot of Aristotle's bad ideas. Other ideas of his were not thrown out, but have generally proven to be irrelevant. The logic used in practice by science owes rather more to people like George Boole, Thomas Bayes and Ronald Fisher than Aristotle. And students are more likely to encounter said logic in a mathematics course than a philosophy one.
That said, it is trivially true that the way that science is carried out demonstrates that they have adopted an implicit philosophy. But that philosophy was mostly developed by scientists themselves, and I've never seen it accurately described by philosophers.
This is not to say that philosophers have not tried. For example Karl Popper attempted to opine on how science must be done, and came up with his famous falsifiability criterion. This theory is laughably ...
All humans are primates, but not all primates are human: the two ideas are not interchangeable. I'm not equivocating; I'm simply saying that it bothers me when people who implicitly philosophize think or say that they are not.
> That said, it is trivially true that the way that science is carried out demonstrates that they have adopted an implicit philosophy. But that philosophy was mostly developed by scientists themselves, and I've never seen it accurately described by philosophers.
That a truth is trivial does not make it self-evident.
Methodological naturalism is not the same thing as philosophical naturalism, but many people (scientists and otherwise) conflate the two. Whether the philosophy is true or not is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.
That someone who implicitly philosophizes says that they are not philosophers? To me that is no more bothersome than someone who speaks English telling me that they are not English majors.
Are you bothered that people like me do not value studying philosophers for the purpose of philosophizing better? But you have not made a case for why I should value it. I have made a case for why I don't value it, but you have not responded to or acknowledged much of it.
However I'll try again.
I maintain that the single most influential work of Greek ethical philosophy is Aesop's Fables. It is more read, more quoted, and its advice is more followed than everything else from ancient Greece, combined. Aesop, if he actually lived, could not have studied Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the other famous philosophers for the simple reason that he predated them. But imagine that Aesop had the opportunity to study and cite them. Would Aesop have been more effective and influential had he done so? Instead of telling relatable stories about animals?
Obviously not! Aesop's philosophizing was made more effective BY his lack of concern for the norms of classical philosophy!
I do not think that this is an isolated example. Norms of behavior are more easily established and absorbed through practical stories than abstract debate. This is as applicable whether it is Aesop instilling a moral about hard work with a story about ants and a grasshopper, or Feynman instilling a moral about the necessity of careful replication experiments with a story about a cargo cult whose planes don't land.
It is too bad that few in psychology paid any attention to Feynman. They could have saved themselves decades of wasted work. But in time the replication crisis brought home the point that their failure to absorb scientific norms was resulting in fraudulent fields which followed the forms of scientific research while producing results that nobody should trust. But I digress.
> That a truth is trivial does not make it self-evident.
This comment is hilariously true when it comes to how mathematicians use the word "trivial".
That said, I believe that you understand and agree with my point that scientists have adopted an implicit philosophy.
> Whether the philosophy is true or not is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.
And here I have to violently agree. If, in fact, you're concerned with Truth with a capital T, then science really isn't the field for you. Because science has learned the hard way not to try to answer that question. So go off and debate it with the philosophers.
But if you wish to understand the world, science has a lot to commend it. There is a necessary chunk of implicit philosophizing that you must absorb to learn it. But you will not find it taught in philosophy courses, nor will studying philosophy help you to absorb it.
Before getting to the main body, this was precisely the point I was making in my original response. That is exactly the point. The rest of this is probably wasted electrons, but they're relatively cheap and I've spent them already.
> What exactly bothers you?
That's a good question with which I've wrestled. A couple introductory notes:
Despite the terseness of my replies, I do try to make them thoughtful. My time is limited, and I have found that less is more when writing. I have read what you wrote, but yes, I'm a bit choosy in responding because the content easily spreads well beyond the original intent of my response and my time boundaries. Apologies to Pascal, but I'd have written you a shorter comment if I had the time.
My intent was to correct a few assumptions that you made about me based on the comment—not to convince you that my perspective is correct or to argue that the term philosopher should not be restricted to those who are educated in the field, or even that scientists should be trained in philosophy (although I think the basics of how we approach the human condition would be useful).
None of the following may apply to you personally; I don't assume that they do, and indeed given our conversation suppose that most of them don't.
So, why would it bother me that scientists profess not to be philosophers?
1. Because all people are philosophers (or theologians, or both). That this is trivially true does not mean that people recognize this fact about themselves; scientists are no exception.
2. The scientific method is not a neutral approach to acquiring knowledge; some people suppose that it is, and in so doing they're making a philosophical statement, not a scientific one.
3. The application of that knowledge is obviously not always neutral, and it can have profound consequences.
4. We should generally be more aware of our own lack of neutrality.
5. Science is gradually (or not-so-gradually) replacing our myths and today serves much the same role in answering our questions about who we are, where we came from, where we're doing, and how we're getting there. In other words, science for many people is becoming philosophy (or theology, or both).
6. When scientists fail to recognize this, they may exacerbate the problems we face trying to answer those questions. They could help avoid this, perhaps, by understanding that they are the modern equivalent of high priests (whether they will or no).
This is not to say that science has no role in answering life's big questions; indeed, it does and probably should. But we cannot go from is to ought, or at least history teaches us that doing so is not conducive to human flourishing. Neither is the transition from knowledge to wisdom immediate or obvious. I know you agree with these statements.
The difficulty I have is that many people elide these distinctions with upturned nose, not realizing that they are turning science into scientism. This might be an avoidable outcome.
1. I cook food for myself, but do not call myself a chef. I have managed to not kill my lawn, but do not call myself a farmer. Why then should the fact that I have opinions about philosophical topics and the existence of God qualify me to be a philosopher and theologian?
2. The fault for believing that the scientific method is a neutral approach to acquiring knowledge lies with those who believe it, and not scientists. For their part, scientists tell the story of the drunk who is crawling on his hands and knees around a streetlamp. When asked what he is doing he replies, "I'm looking for my wallet." When asked where the wallet was dropped he replies, "By those bushes." When asked why he's not by the bushes he replies, "But the light is better here!"
Scientists are very clear that they are looking where the light is good. Instead of where the answers to the most important questions seem likely to be found. Most are also clear that doing otherwise would stop them from being scientists.
3. Scientists are seldom focused on potential applications, usually can't predict what they may be, and when applications appear, are usually not in control of them. So while I agree that applications are not always neutral, I do not agree that scientists should be doing anything differently because of it.
4. We should be aware of our lack of neutrality, but I see this as advice that is best directed at influential non-scientists. And not advice that is actionable by scientists.
5. There is a long history of people cherry-picking what they want out of science, and using it to advocate for whatever positions they may hold. History shows that the support, opposition, or indifference of scientists does not much impact this. You may verify by looking at the history of Social Darwinism, Christian Science, Scientology, or Ram Dass' invocations of quantum mechanics. Given this history, why would you believe that scientists can much impact what non-scientists say and do in the name of science?
6. To the extent that scientists are the modern equivalent of high priests, they are learning what the priests have always known. They only have power to the extent that they say things that the public wishes to hear. Which winds up being less power than it would appear.
Here is an illustrative example. Jesus told us that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. And yet, this very night, millions of his followers will pray for the very wealth that Jesus warned against!
I bring this up not to argue for a specific theological interpretation, but to make a point. Suppose that a preacher at a megachurch were to decide that Jesus was right, and this should be the subject of every Sunday sermon until his flock properly followed Jesus' advice. I predict that his flock would soon find new churches with preachers that they prefer listening to. And the preacher who thought he shaped the minds of thousands, would find nobody listening to him.
Scientists are in a similar position. Except that they are trying to follow knowledge where the light is good. They neither wanted nor are suited to a role as preacher. And so they properly avoid stepping into the role, let alone stepping into it for the purpose of following the agenda that you wish that they would follow.
You somehow believe that there would be value in pressuring scientists to behave otherwise. I don't.
Hence the disclaimer. I just think this stuff is fascinating. If you're interested, this is the article that originally got me thinking about these ideas as they relate to the flow of time: "Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math" [0]. It's effectively an appeal to intuitionist mathematics and a rejection of constructivism, where - simplified - every particle since the big bang can be assigned some "number" that describes its position on its world line, with a precision that is finite, but always increasing - and it's this increase in precision from which emerges the "flow" of time. If you ctrl+f the article for "continuum," you'll see some better constructed arguments for what I'm trying to argue, e.g.:
> Moreover, the continuum can’t be cleanly divided into two parts consisting of all numbers less than ½ and all those greater than or equal to ½. “If you try to cut the continuum in half, this number x is going to stick to the knife, and it won’t be on the left or on the right,” said Posy. “The continuum is viscous; it’s sticky.”
The impression I'm left with is that the difference between constructivist vs. intuitionist mathematics (which rejects the law of the excluded middle) has some parallels to the difference between eternalism (there is a past, present and future) vs. presentism (there is only the present).
As a layman, I just can't help but notice the same patterns come up again and again when looking at unresolved problems between classical and quantum mechanics, namely those that lie at the boundary between the continuous and discrete. FWIW, I asked ChatGPT for some unresolved mathematical problems that might relate to this, and it came up with: The Continuum Hypothesis, The Axiom of Choice, and The Riemann Hypothesis, all of which it admitted are possibly impossible to prove because they're effectively unfalsifiable. (I also showed it this entire thread, and it agreed with your critique of my arguments, but also that every argument in the thread is unfalsifiable - and then it pointed me to the Boltzmann Brain paradox).
[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-time-really-flow-new-clu...
Nature doesn't have to obey any particular set of axiom you adopt.
By analogy, while spherical coordinates are arbitrary, latitude is defined. Arbitrary, but defined.
But the centre of the Earth has an undefined latitude, and a topological subspace consisting of just the surface of the Earth can't hand-wave past that by pointing out that's just a coordinate singularity that can be safely ignored — there isn't a center of the Earth anywhere in that subspace. If the universe is flat and finite (looping), this problem still exists.
And if the universe is unbounded (infinite), that has a different problem because you can't properly define a median of an infinite set[0], so no center exists.
If it just stops suddenly after a certain amount of space, then we get to have a center, but there's no sign of that.
[0] I think. Infinity is easy to get messed up with.
Be patient. It hasn't been evaluated just yet.
Hard to summarize, but it's well worth anyone interested in this topic. There's a good bit where he ties the sleeping beauty thought experiment with Boltzmann Brains and consciousness; it blew my mind trying to understand the whole thing.
The regular arrow of time from the human perspective, "leaks" changes into the future. The future is constantly being changed by the past.
You can measure those changes by many ways, the 2nd. law of thermodynamics is everywhere just to make sure you see this happening across everything.
So, probably there are other non-discovered underlying mechanisms in the reality that are already signaling changes from the future "leaking" into the past, changing the past right infront of us, without us noticing it.
A probably omnipresent mechanism for observing the future changing the past, valid in the whole cone of light visible to us, is the probability law.
If you have 10 millions of possible events in a probability, one of them is the exact thing it will happen in the future, hence the information of what happens in the future is right here, existing in the past.
Yeah, you can say how would the nature could use this information without powerful processors predicting branches trillions of times per second on Earth right now?
Well, the brain is a pattern predictor, quite several parts of the brain are firmly attached to the physics of the universe, biochemically but what if the pattern prediction mechanisms in the brain are actually an adaptation of the evolution, just like wings to fly, but with those mechanisms the brain uses probability to "see" information from the future, and here in the "present", it changes the past (from the perspective of the future created originally from the past), if the brain "chooses now" to do something different that what originally created the future it "saw" by analizing patterns, essentially evaluating probabilities.
So the Probability Law would be a kind of Inverted 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics.
It would work perfectly as law of the universe: from the future to the past, the revered time of arrow, one single event created "a" future, but from the regular arrow of time, there would a range of probable future outcomes which you cannot precisely say it has "1" (100%) probability of ocurring, right to exact moment till the future becomes the present.
And it was right there all the time, something obvious infront of everybody in the world, like electricity (which was suspected by many across thousands of years, but just "discovered" recently).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_total_probability
I'll expand here how if the arrow of time actually doesn't exist, the future could change the past without breaking our - current - understanding of physics (tragiclly because we will probably have maybe hundred of years till we change our minds about what are the properties of the universe).
In a range or probabilities of one event, one of the probabilities will always be the one is going to actually happen. Closer to the event to occur the most certain you can be about which one of those, could be the one that will happen.
Here's the catch, you have to change your mind a bit, in our current understanding of physics, the information of the future event which has not happen yet, already exists here in the past for that event.
Now, if you know - and you know - the outcome of an event, you most certainly will be able to choose if you go along that path, or you choose to change the future event to something else. Whoalá, the future changed the past.
Brains of earth continously do this, every second of our entire lives, animal brains do this too, almost all life on Earth has some neurological, physiological, chemical predictive mechanism in place.
An example, you're about to walk across a street, you see a car coming, now your brain "predicts" you'll be hit by that car if you just keep walking, you stop walking to avoid certain death, done, the future changed the past. The information - really close to 100% of probability of death - extracted by the brain from the sheer reality of the universe, allowed you to survive.
And no current understanding of physics got harmed anywhere along the way of the future changing the past.
I commented further in this line of though in another comments, about a probable (ironically), "Inverted 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics" of sorts, which it would be basically just the Law of Probability, interpreted from the point of view of not having an actual arrow of time and the fact that we have - all the time, again ironically - the information of what happens in the future (the one probability in the range which ends being the right one, actually ocurring).
Yeah, I know it would be another Law, and the universe would upside down once again for us the poor meatbags, but we were already in this position several times, discovering the electricity, quantum mechanics, relativiy, you name it.
So yes, the prediction of the decision to have a ham sandwich tomorrow, for any given person is now, by the state of the art of applied mathematics and information science, a relative doable - if not plain easy - feat.
And according to some hypothesis, the brain could be doing this exactly kind of predictions, even more better than LLMs, with more accuracy/speed using way less energy.
Sure, the LLM may be able to guess by reasoning (e.g. 'He always eats ham sandwiches for breakfast and he probably wouldn't break his routine'), the same way we could guess at another person's behaviour, but we're talking about reducing the brain into a deterministic input/output machine, which is a far larger ask.
Now if you said 'doable' that may be right in the long term, but 'easy'? Absolutely not. There's no current way to feed 'me' or 'you' into an equivalent LLM. The human brain has more axons then there are stars in the galaxy and we are nowhere close to even mapping these connections.
>The brain could be doing this exactly kind of predictions, even more better than LLMs, with more accuracy/speed using way less energy.
That's definitely an option. The fact that many of the brain's operations could be done by LLMs is a strike against the original thesis.
I have seen creationists in web forums trot this exact argument out (only the creator was God of course).
[0] https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/273398
I realize that programmers are not always good scientists. Yet some claims are absurd in ways that I now believe this phenomenon necessitates rigorous study.