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Please Pass the Blueprints

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Were told that reproducibility is what endows evolution (i.e., NS+RM) with the necessary power for overcoming huge obstacles of complexity.

However, does this same argument apply to the structures that organisms construct? DNA can produce, and then reproduce, an ‘eye,’ but how, exactly, does DNA produce and reproduce an architectural plan?

For example, a group of biologists, engineers and other scientists, led by scientist from Imperical College, London have used 3D X-ray imaging to explore and understand the structure underlying nests built by termites. It’s really quite incredible.

A group of engineers, biologists, chemists and mathematicians lead by Imperial College London, the University of Nottingham, and CNRS-Toulouse have looked closer than ever before at how these nests work using 3-D X-ray imaging. They found small holes, or pores, in the walls of termite mounds which help them stay cool, ventilated, and dry.

Lead author Dr. Kamaljit Singh, from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: “Termite nests are a unique example of architectural perfection by insects. The way they’re designed offers fascinating self-sustaining temperature and ventilation controlling properties throughout the year without using any mechanical or electronic appliances.”

Who would have thought that termites, using random mutations, could turn themselves into master architects!! They’re creators of “architectural perfection”.

In fact, it’s such an outstanding design that the authors tell us this:

Dr. Singh said: “Not only do these remarkable structures self-ventilate and regulate their own temperatures—they also have inbuilt drainage systems. Our research provides deeper insight into how they manage this so well.”

The scientists say the newly found architecture within termite nests could help us improve ventilation, temperature control, and drainage systems in buildings—and hopefully make them more energy efficient.

They’ve out-designed humans! Bravo!

But there is this question: where are we to locate the architectural plans for these nests? IOW, are they found in some kind of organelle in some cell somewhere? Is there some kind of termite boarding school where all this fascinating archticture is taught and learned?

Or, is this “knowledge” contained in their DNA and copied in just the same way as all DNA is copied by the cell and then transmitted? Isn’t this the likely answer?

But this implies, does it not, that DNA can contain–is the respository of, “knowledge” simply as “knowledge”? And isn’t “knowledge” the work of ‘minds’? Isn’t it only the ‘mind’ that can discover, distinguish, appropriate and value “knowledge”? If so, then isn’t the conclusion we should take away from what termites are able to accomplish one of DNA being completely capable of harmonizing itself with the work of a ‘mind’?

I suspect there are a few evolutionary biologists (Darwinists) who might disagree with this notion.

Comments
as to: "Hence, natural science cannot answer the ‘first cause’ question. But the natural science which has the fewest assumptions that must be taken for granted," Aside from your a-priori assumption that science must be 'natural', can you tell me exactly what it is that you think is 'natural' about science? Are intelligently designed test tubes, microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopes, computers, etc.. all 'natural' for you? Is setting up elaborate experiments according to the predictions of highly abstract mathematical theories 'natural' for you? Is analyzing the results of those elaborate experiments with extremely powerful computers to see if they match those abstract mathematical predictions 'natural' for you? Exactly where does 'nature' come into your picture other than being the end object of study for the Scientists using instruments that they themselves intelligently designed and mathematical formalisms that they themselves intelligently envisioned in their immaterial minds? The term 'natural science' is an oxymoron! Science certainly is NOT 'natural'! Clearly science is not the result of 'nature' but is the result of the intelligent design of men. Therefore for you and others to a-priorily assume that all science must be 'natural' beforehand is for you to artificially impose your own philosophical bias of naturalism onto science before any investigation has even begun. In short, you are sneaking you very own desired conclusion into your premises when you insist that all science must be 'natural.' In fact, man's very 'unnatural' practice of science itself refutes your claim that all science must be 'natural'.bornagain77
March 27, 2019
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(1) Who is this “creator”? The science is always incomplete since it must assume without proof some starting system and its properties, the way it works. There is no way around that. Hence, natural science cannot answer the 'first cause' question. But the natural science which has the fewest assumptions that must be taken for granted, is better than alternatives that explain the same phenomena with more assumptions. The computational approach (NKS) I am describing is the most economical, since except for the initial Planck scale network and its task/objective (punishments/rewards) everything at all larger scales is computed by the network as it pursues that task/objective. Since it is known that even a simple cellular automata, on/off (2 states) in 1-dimension (each automaton has 2 neighbors in a ring) are for some automaton state change rules universal computers i.e. they can compute anything that is computable, the initial network can be very simple (two states on/off or 1/0, and just two neighbors for each node). Note that there are only 256 different rules possible for 1-dimensional 2 state automata, thus one byte (8 bits) suffices to specify rules of state change of any possible automate system (the 'natural laws' for the fundamental initial universe that must be taken for granted). And, (2) it would appear that ‘intelligence’ can be “poured into” the material order. The advantage of the Planck scale network approach is that intelligence (for seeking the initially set objectives) accumulates as network runs, and no further intelligence needs to be added by the creator later. This approach, in addition to requiring the least front-loading, requires also the least capable creator that has to be left outside of natural science i.e. the creator need not be omniscient or omnipotent or super-intelligent. The intelligence we observe in the present universe is computed by the initially dumb network while pursuing the objective it was given. This is similar to AlphaZero chess program which was a network given initially only the rules of the chess and objective (to maximize number of game points, with 1 point for win, 1/2 for draw and 0 for loss), but no chess knowledge (openings, endgames, strategy and tactics/combinations or useful maneuvers) or programming algorithms. After starting as complete chess novice, in 4 hours of playing chess games by itself (before it learned much, its games consisted of completely random legal moves), it exceeded the best conventional chess programs, the crowning achievements of human intelligence and creativity (the fruits of the decades of human programming of accumulated human chess knowledge, and the best search and other algorithms). In summary, these types of systems are not given much of front-loaded intelligence. Instead they are given capability to increase their intelligence (or improve their problem solving skills and capabilities). This is analogous to giving a man a fishing net and teaching him how to fish with it, instead of giving him and all his progeny fish every day for eternity. Teaching him how to fish is a vastly more economical solution to the problem getting food than providing him food every step of the way. This is a lot to not know. Among those open problems, only the question "who/what is creator" is potentially outside of natural science (unless the creator left the answer encoded in the creation; I would certainly do that if I were a creator). The answers to the rest of listed problems can in principle be discovered as science advances. Note that regarding theology of this kind of Universe, there is an unknown, possibly unknowable, first mover or creator which, unlike the God of deism, doesn't need much intelligence or knowledge or input into creation after creating it (it's not omniscient or omnipotent). The creator also doesn't need to intervene in or muck with the creation after it brought it into existence. There is also a knowable, super-intelligent, super-powerfull, all-knowing deity, equivalent to God of theism, which corresponds to fundamental Planck scale network after its ~14 billion years of perfecting itself. That is the deity that upholds and runs Universe at all scales and at all times, that knows everything that everyone does or thinks at all scales and at every moment, i.e. everything that is in principle knowable in our Universe. This deity also gets smarter moment by moment as Universe evolves. It is from computational poerspective10^80 times more powerful computer (assuming ground level of creation is at Planck scale, which is the smallest scale our present science knows, but more if it goes beyond that) than human brain or any computer of any size we can ever build. But the correlation is between ‘consciousness’ and ‘intelligence,’ not some form of matter and intelligence. I have discussed in several posts how the consciousness can coherently and economically fit into the computational (algorithmic/NKS) approach in that long thread mentioned earlier (hyperlinked TOC is of my posts there is at the end of this post).nightlight
March 27, 2019
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Nightlight:
Hence, the intelligence initially put into the system by the creator can be a lot lower than what we see in the present Universe.
Two things; (1) Who is this "creator"? And, (2) it would appear that 'intelligence' can be "poured into" the material order. You're not very far away from ID.
We don’t know yet what is the problem that was given to Universe as self-programming computer (that started as initially dumb Planck scale network), what are its punishments and rewards, what are the rules of the underlying game, or what is the is full set of intermediate algorithms/sub-programs/technologies it developed while running.
This is a lot to not know. So, let's turn it around: what do we 'know'? We know that life exists, that it changed over time, and that we are self-conscious, intelligent beings. If we're not intelligent, then we can't make sense of anything. But we do. If we're not self-conscious, then we wouldn't be aware that we are aware, so that the fruit of intelligence would principally be wasted. So, then, only because we are self-conscious, intelligent beings are we able to know that life exists and (with discovery over time) that it has changed. But the correlation is between 'consciousness' and 'intelligence,' not some form of matter and intelligence.PaV
March 26, 2019
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is matter, per se, intelligent? As you anticipated, yes, the "real" matter is intelligent. This is not apparent in the present "official" physics which formulates fundamental theory (quantum field theory & standard model) via physical laws (the known part of real physics algorithm, the algorithm that runs Universe) + initial and boundary conditions (IBCs, fudge input to cover for the unknown parts of the real physics algorithm). The IBCs for systems that have more than few particles, are assumed "random" i.e. when running present physics algorithm, the unknown/unconctrolalbe actual IBCs are replaced by hand picked simple random distributions and only statistical aspects of the system behavior are computed. Hence our current fundamental theory is only statistical and its predictions of system behavior are probabilistic, and within its concpet of matter, the matter is dumb by definition. Clearly, that is not the intelligent matter I was referring to. But there are budding new theories, explicitly algorithmic (such as NKS, with networks at Planck scale, mentioned earlier) which could make the intelligence of real "matter" (not the "matter" of present theory, which is dumb by definition) plainly evident. In that approach, the fundamental level is a self-programming computer which accumulates and builds up intelligence as it runs. The basic building blocks of this network, nodes and links, can be very simple and dumb on initial creation, but in the more mature state, after it has run long enough, it can be arbitrary intelligent/smart. We know this about neural networks, which are mathematical model for such networked systems. For example, Google has recently demonstrated a fairly small neural network (few thousand nodes) Alpha Zero, which learned to play chess (also Go and Shogi, as well as other games) with only rules of chess (how pieces move or promote and what is the win/draw/loss) provided as its initial knowledge. After playing games against itself for about 4 hours, Alpha Zero became far better at chess than the best conventional chess programs, which are the result of decades of hard work by the the best and brightest mathematicians, programmers and chess players. For those unfamiliar with computer chess, these conventional chess programs are far better at chess than the best human chess grandmasters. Yet the small neural network which started as blank slate, as a complete chess novice, increased its intelligence (in domain of chess) by just playing chess with itself (this is the so-called unsupervised learning) beyond the cream of the crop that decades of human intelligence has been able to achieve (the conventional chess programs) after playing against itself for only 4 hours. Hence, the intelligence initially put into the system by the creator can be a lot lower than what we see in the present Universe. Of course, the creator in this perspective, need not be omniscient or even "merely" super-intelligent or know in advance what solution for the problem assigned the computer/Universe it built, the Universe will come up with. This is analogous to us building computer and programming it to compute complex motions of interacting planets, comets and asteroids. Once the program runs, it can answer quantitative questions about these motions, even though that data was not part of the program (it only knows about Newton laws, plus numeric input for specific problem -- the initial positions, velocities and masses of celestial bodes we are interested in). Hence, the programmer/creator doesn't know the answers that the program will compute. The main difference of this (conventional) kind of computer from Neural Network based computer is that the latter is self programming. It only needs to run from blank slate initial knowledge, except for problem definition, and adjust the weights of the network links according to punishments/rewards it experiences/detects (such as those from rules of the chess, the win/draw/loss definitions in Alpha Zero). We don't know yet what is the problem that was given to Universe as self-programming computer (that started as initially dumb Planck scale network), what are its punishments and rewards, what are the rules of the underlying game, or what is the is full set of intermediate algorithms/sub-programs/technologies it developed while running. We only know some of its technologies and only partially, at scales from elementary particles and larger. And of course, we don't know, and may never know, who/what is the creator, how it works and what is it trying to do with Universe computer.nightlight
March 26, 2019
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Nightlight: You wrote:
Yes, the “dumb matter” is intelligent. Of course you need something to create the initial system. Science is never complete, it needs to postulate that initial system and its properties which are taken for granted. The difference in economy of assumtions between different proposed sets of postulates is what makes the difference in their value — the more economical assumptions are preferable.
This doesn't really respond to my question, so I'll rephrase it a little for clarification: is matter, per se, intelligent? I'll presuppose that you'll answer, "yes, matter is the wellspring of intelligence." Where did matter come from? You wrote that "something [is needed] to create the initial system." Please clarify, if you will, what this "something" is.PaV
March 26, 2019
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LOL NL asks: "Show me formula with “consciousness” in any natural science before you can make such proclamations. There is none." LOL,,, You are one confused little puppy! :) Mathematics comes from Mind and mind is certainly not the result of mathematics:
BRUCE GORDON: Hawking's irrational arguments - October 2010 Excerpt: The physical universe is causally incomplete and therefore neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. The world of space, time, matter and energy is dependent on a reality that transcends space, time, matter and energy. This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world. Neither is it the case that “nothing” is unstable, as Mr. Hawking and others maintain. Absolute nothing cannot have mathematical relationships predicated on it, not even quantum gravitational ones. Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency - a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” Anything else invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ An Interview with David Berlinski - Jonathan Witt Berlinski: There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…. Interviewer:… Come again(?) … Berlinski: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/found-upon-web-and-reprinted-here.html
bornagain77
March 26, 2019
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Nightlight, simply put, I have empirical evidence for my claim and you do not. Science works by reference to empirical evidence. Moreover, if you deny that consciousness and free will have any role in quantum mechanics and in how you yourself are making your own personal and supposedly logical decisions, despite the fact that the free will loop hole itself has now been closed in quantum mechanics, (as I showed you by reference to empirical evidence in my post at 32) , and if you opt for one of your supposedly rational 'alternate interpretations' (of note: all 'alternate interpretations' are each fatally flawed in their own right), for instance you mentioned Bohmian mechanics
Bohmian mechanics, a ludicrous caricature of Nature - Lubos Motl - July 15, 2013 Excerpt: There's no way out here. If you attempt to emulate a quantum field theory (QED) in this Bohmian way, you introduce lots of ludicrous gears and wheels – much like in the case of the luminiferous aether, they are gears and wheels that don't exist according to pretty much direct observations – and they must be finely adjusted to reproduce what quantum mechanics predicts (sometimes) without any adjustments whatsoever. Every new Bohmian gear or wheel you encounter generally breaks the Lorentz symmetry and makes the (wrong) prediction of a Lorentz violation and you will need to fine-tune infinitely many properties of these gears and wheels to restore the Lorentz invariance and other desirable properties of a physical theory (even a simple and fundamental thing such as the linearity of Schrödinger's equation is really totally unexplained in Bohmian mechanics and requires infinitely many adjustments to hold – while it may be derived from logical consistency in quantum mechanics). It's infinitely unlikely that they take the right values "naturally" so the theory is at least infinitely contrived. More likely, there's no way to adjust the gears and wheels to obtain relativistically invariant predictions at all. I would say that we pretty much directly experimentally observe the fact that the observations obey the Lorentz symmetry; the wave function isn't an observable wave; and lots of other, totally universal and fundamental facts about the symmetries and the interpretation of the basic objects we use in physics. Bohmian mechanics is really trying to deny all these basic principles – it is trying to deny facts that may be pretty much directly extracted from experiments. It is in conflict with the most universal empirical data about the reality collected in the 20th and 21st century. It wants to rape Nature. A pilot-wave-like theory has to be extracted from a very large class of similar classical theories but infinitely many adjustments have to be made – a very special subclass has to be chosen – for the Bohmian theory to reproduce at least some predictions of quantum mechanics (to produce predictions that are at least approximately local, relativistic, rotationally invariant, unitary, linear etc.). But even if one succeeds and the Bohmian theory does reproduce the quantum predictions, we can't really say that it has made the correct predictions because it was sometimes infinitely fudged or adjusted to produce the predetermined goal. On the other hand, quantum mechanics in general and specific quantum mechanical theories in particular genuinely do predict certain facts, including some very general facts about Nature. If you search for theories within the rigid quantum mechanical framework, while obeying the general postulates, you may make many correct predictions or conclusions pretty much without any additional assumptions. https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/bohmian-mechanics-ludicrous-caricature.html A more detailed critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) is here, A Critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn2hoU4jaQQ
,,, if you deny that consciousness and free will have any role in QM and in your own thought process, then you undermine any claim that you are making a logically coherent argument in the first place. “The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.”
Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html
This fundamental failure within the atheist's worldview, in their denial of free will, is laid bare in the 'argument from reason'. The following quote and videos, flesh out C.S. Lewis's 'argument from reason' in more detail,,,
“One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.” —C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry (aka the Argument from Reason) C.S. Lewis, Reason, and Naturalism: An Interview with Dr. Jay Richards - audio http://www.idthefuture.com/2012/12/cs_lewis_reason_and_naturalism.html What is the Argument from Reason? - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B8n__9CEj4
Bottom line NL, if you want to claim you are being reasonable in your arguments, then you must believe in free will and even also ultimately believe in God. If you want to continue to deny free will, then I am also free to ignore your arguments as being irrational in their foundational basis.
Of related neuroscience note: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/pushing-the-free-will-loophole-back-to-7-8-billion-years-ago/#comment-664968
bornagain77
March 26, 2019
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But there is no reason for you to feel too bad, Einstein himself also falsely believed that “There is no “consciousness” attribute or quantity in present natural science.” That is plainly evident to anyone familiar with natural science. Show me formula with "consciousness" in any natural science before you can make such proclamations. There is none. Note that here you confusing map with the territory and that non/existence of consciousness quantity in natural science (the map) is the not the same as non/existence of "consciousness" in real world which natural science only seeks to describe. While present natural science doesn't have consciousness quantity, my position is that consciousness does exist in real world, that it is fundamental and causally effective. All your QM and consciousness based arguments and "refutations" are flawed, either by being crude examples of scientism or by failing to discern between statements of natural science and philosophical speculations about the phenomena of natural science, as explained in my two previous posts. All that sprinkled with a generous dose of failure to distinguish between map and territory. These flaws are a perfect example of Dunning-Kruger effect in action.nightlight
March 26, 2019
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“It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott... It/QM proves nothing of the sort. That is one interpretation of phenomena covered by QM. There are other interpretations or formulation of the same set of empirically known phenomena, predicting exactly the same behaviors (those we know of so far) as the mystical interpretations/formulations of QM, in which measurement (let alone consciousness) plays no special role, such as Self-Field Electrodynamics (SFED, by Asim Barut), Bohmian mechanics, etc. In the case of former, the Barut's SFED, it becomes very clear why the measurement appears strange in conventional formulation of QM -- the conventional QM turns out to be piecewise-linear approximation (PLA) of the nonlinear SFED equations and the QM measurent problem is an artifact of the approximation. An elementary example of PLA is numerical integration used to calculate an area under some curve y=f(x) by tiling that area via rectangles as shown by image below: Unlike the real/exact curve y=f(x), its PLA is the top outline of the rectangles, with odd looking jumps instead of the smooth curve y=f(x) it approximates. In Barut's SFED the QM measurement mystery/problem doesn't exist, being equivalent to "jump mystery/problem" in the PL approximation of y=f(x) area by rectangles -- the apparent strangeness is merely an artifact of approximation, it's not how the system (or curve) actually is. Hence, the QM measurement problem is like asking in the rectangles approximation of curve y=f(x), "what causes those jumps? The SFED answer is -- nothing, they don't actually exist in the real curve y=f(x). This the second problem with your argument, in addition to not understanding that "consciousness" quantity doesn't exist in present natural science (it's not in any formula or prediction or postulate or definition). In the latter case, you have failed to discern between scientific theory and philosophical speculations about it. In the fault of your "refutation" explained here, ironically you have fallen into the trap of scientism (which you usually rail against in biology regarding Darwinism) i.e. taking one (dominant/mainstream/most popular) formulation of a theory of some phenomena as the final truth, or the only possible truth, not being aware of empirically equivalent alternatives in which nothing special happens in measurement and where magic observers are superfluous.nightlight
March 26, 2019
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Again, the implications for individual humans, to put it mildly, are fairly drastic,
Bill Wiese (Man Who Went To Hell) – 23 Minutes in Hell (8 Minute Version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqufixPt2w0 “I started to move toward the light. The way I moved, the physics, was completely different than it is here on Earth. It was something I had never felt before and never felt since. It was a whole different sensation of motion. I obviously wasn’t walking or skipping or crawling. I was not floating. I was flowing. I was flowing toward the light. I was accelerating and I knew I was accelerating, but then again, I didn’t really feel the acceleration. I just knew I was accelerating toward the light. Again, the physics was different – the physics of motion of time, space, travel. It was completely different in that tunnel, than it is here on Earth. I came out into the light and when I came out into the light, I realized that I was in heaven.” Barbara Springer – Near Death Experience – The Tunnel – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv2jLeoAcMI
i.e. you, with either your acceptance or rejection God and what he has done through Jesus Christ, are literally choosing between eternal life with God or eternal death separated from God:
Verse: Deuteronomy 30:19-20 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Because of such dire consequences for our eternal souls, I can only plead for atheists to seriously reconsider their choice to reject God, and to now choose life, even eternal life with God, instead of eternal death separated from God.
Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words “The Lamb” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Of related note:
Albert Einstein vs. Quantum Mechanics and His Own Mind – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxFFtZ301j4
bornagain77
March 26, 2019
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And Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, in 2018, now closed the last remaining ‘free will loophole’ in quantum mechanics, thereby establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are not determined by any causal influences from the past, and that experimenter is therefore free to choose whatever measurement settings that may desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may find interesting.
Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).
Challenging local realism with human choices – A. Zeilinger – 20 May 2018 Abstract: A Bell test, which challenges the philosophical worldview of local realism against experimental observations, is a randomized trial requiring spatially-distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection, and unpredictable measurement settings. While technology can perfect the first two of these, and while technological randomness sources enable device-independent protocols based on Bell inequality violation, challenging local realism using physical randomizers inevitably makes assumptions about the same physics one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness of physical setting choices and argued that human free will could rigorously be used to assure unpredictability in Bell tests. Here we report a suite of local realism tests using human choices, avoiding assumptions about predictability in physics. We recruited ~100,000 human participants to play an online video game that incentivizes fast, sustained input of unpredictable bits while also illustrating Bell test methodology. The participants generated 97,347,490 binary choices, which were directed via a scalable web platform to twelve laboratories on five continents, in which 13 experiments tested local realism using photons, single atoms, atomic ensembles, and superconducting devices. Over a 12-hour period on the 30 Nov. 2016, participants worldwide provided a sustained flow of over 1000 bits/s to the experiments, which used different human-generated bits to choose each measurement setting. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realist positions in bi-partite and tri-partite scenarios. Project outcomes include closing of the freedom-of-choice loophole, gamification of statistical and quantum non-locality concepts, new methods for quantum-secured communications, a very large dataset of human-generated randomness, and networking techniques for global participation in experimental science. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04431
Moreover, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loop hole by Zeilinger and company), provides a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the quote unquote ‘Theory of Everything”
Overturning of the Copernican Principle by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bill-nye-should-check-wikipedia/#comment-671672 (February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673178 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673179 Luke 22:42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Supplemental notes defending the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/viruses-devolve/#comment-674732
To give a glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ resurrection from the dead, as the following article states, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html
Besides the empirical verification of ‘free will’ and/or Agent causality within quantum theory bringing that rather startling solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, there, to put it mildly, is also another fairly drastic implication for individual people being “brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” as well. Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. Lewis states the situation as such:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.” – C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
In support of C.S. Lewis’s contention that “Without that self-choice there could be no Hell”, I only have to point to the people who are fanatically ‘pro-choice’ as far as abortion in concerned, demanding the unrestricted right to choose death for their unborn baby no matter what stage of development the baby may be at. Shoot, infanticide itself, unthinkable just a few short years ago, is now being demanded by many on the ‘pro-choice’ side. Moreover, exactly as would be a priorily expected on the Christian view of reality, and via two of our most precisely tested theories in science, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QDy1Soolo
bornagain77
March 26, 2019
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It is also interesting to point out that this experiment for 'quantum entanglement in time' is very friendly to Dr. Michael Egnor’s (Theistic) contention (via Aristotle) that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance.”
Perception and the Cartesian Theater – Michael Egnor – December 8, 2015 Excerpt: Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance. The notion that a perception of the moon occurs at the moon is “bizarre” (Torley’s word) only if one presumes that perception is constrained by distance and local conditions — perhaps perception would get tired if it had to go to the moon or it wouldn’t be able to go because it’s too cold there. Yet surely the view that the perception of a rose held up to my eye was located at the rose wouldn’t be deemed nearly as bizarre. At what distance does perception of an object at the object become inconceivable? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/perception_and101471.html
And it is also interesting to note that this finding or ‘quantum entanglement in time’ also refutes Dr Vincent Torley’s strenuous objection against Dr Egnor. Dr. Torley objected that perception cannot possibly occur ‘at a distance’ since the Supernova “ceased to exist nearly 200 millennia ago, long before the dawn of human history.”
The Squid and the Supernova: A Reply to Professor Egnor - December 9, 2015 – vjtorley Excerpt: In February 1987, a supernova appeared in the Southern skies, and remained visible for several months. ,,, The problem is that the object itself ceased to exist nearly 200 millennia ago, long before the dawn of human history. Even if the squid that witnessed the explosion were capable of having perceptions which are located in intergalactic space, as Egnor contends, they are surely incapable of having perceptions which go back in time. ,,,perception is a bodily event, and that an event involving my body cannot take place at a point which is separate from my body. An event involving my body may occur inside my body, or at the surface of my body, but never separately from it. Thus it simply makes no sense to assert that I am here, at point X, but that my perceptions – or for that matter, my actions – are located at an external point Y. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-squid-and-the-supernova-a-reply-to-professor-egnor/
Yet, despite Dr. Torley’s strenuous objection against Dr. Egnor’s claim that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance.” and to repeat Professor Crull’s statement, the findings of quantum entanglement in time “implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.” In further confirmation of Stanley Jaki’s contention that, “There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future.”, in further confirmation of that contention, not only does “quantum mechanics,, mimic an influence of future actions on past events", but quantum mechanics even shows us that out present conscious choices determine what future will be presented to us. As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” Anton Zeilinger – Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437
As well, with contextuality we find, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation”
Contextuality is ‘magic ingredient’ for quantum computing – June 11, 2012 Excerpt: Contextuality was first recognized as a feature of quantum theory almost 50 years ago. The theory showed that it was impossible to explain measurements on quantum systems in the same way as classical systems. In the classical world, measurements simply reveal properties that the system had, such as colour, prior to the measurement. In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation. Imagine turning over a playing card. It will be either a red suit or a black suit – a two-outcome measurement. Now imagine nine playing cards laid out in a grid with three rows and three columns. Quantum mechanics predicts something that seems contradictory – there must be an even number of red cards in every row and an odd number of red cards in every column. Try to draw a grid that obeys these rules and you will find it impossible. It’s because quantum measurements cannot be interpreted as merely revealing a pre-existing property in the same way that flipping a card reveals a red or black suit. Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. That’s part of the weirdness of quantum mechanics. http://phys.org/news/2014-06-weird-magic-ingredient-quantum.html
And as this recent experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established, “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger - March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html
Thus, Stanley Jaki’s contention that “There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future.”, is now experimentally established by the fact that “quantum mechanics,, can mimic an influence of future actions on past events" and is also established by the fact that, “We are not just passive observers,,, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure”. In other words, besides ‘the experience of the now’ being empirically confirmed as being true by the fact that “reality does not exist if you are not looking at it", the mental attribute of the ‘the experience of the now’ is also confirmed as being true by showing that quantum mechanics influences on both the past and future. Thus, to sum this section of this post up, recent experiments in quantum mechanics, contrary to what Einstein himself thought was possible for experimental physics, have shown that ‘the experience of the now’ is very much a part of experimental physics. In fact, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to rephrase Einstein's answer to the philosopher, Rudolph Carnap, in this way:
"It is impossible for “the experience of 'the now'” to ever be divorced from physical measurement, it will always be a part of physics."
To continue on, Einstein, besides falsely believing that "The experience of 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics", Einstein also denied the reality of his own free will.
“In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever.,,,” “I am compelled to act as if free will existed, because if I wish to live in a civilized society I must act responsibly. . . I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime, but I prefer not to take tea with him.” – Albert Einstein – early 1930s Physicist George Ellis on the importance of philosophy and free will – July 27, 2014 Excerpt: And free will?: Horgan: Einstein, in the following quote, seemed to doubt free will: “If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.” Do you believe in free will? Ellis: Yes. Einstein is perpetuating the belief that all causation is bottom up. This simply is not the case, as I can demonstrate with many examples from sociology, neuroscience, physiology, epigenetics, engineering, and physics. Furthermore if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options. I find it very hard to believe this to be the case – indeed it does not seem to make any sense. Physicists should pay attention to Aristotle’s four forms of causation – if they have the free will to decide what they are doing. If they don’t, then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicist-george-ellis-on-the-importance-of-philosophy-and-free-will/
And again, contrary to Einstein's logically self refuting belief that he had no free will, quantum mechanics itself falsifies Einstein's contention that he had no free will. As Steven Weinberg, an atheist, states in the following article, (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/trouble-with-quantum-mechanics/
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. Although there have been several loop holes in quantum mechanics in the past that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years those loop holes have all been closed one by one. The last major loop hole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or ‘free-will’ loop-hole:
Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm
bornagain77
March 26, 2019
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Prior to his encounter with Carnap, Einstein had another encounter with another famous philosopher, Henri Bergson, over the proper definition of time (Bergson was well versed in 'the now' of the mind). In fact, that encounter with Bergson over the proper definition of time was one of the primary reasons that Einstein failed to receive a Nobel prize for relativity:
Einstein, Bergson, and the Experiment that Failed: Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations! - Jimena Canales page 1177 Excerpt: Bergson temporarily had the last word during their meeting at Société française de philosophie. His intervention negatively affected Einstein’s Nobel Prize, which was given “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect” and not for relativity. The reasons behind this decision, as stated in the prize’s presentation speech, were related to Bergson’s intervention: “Most discussion [of Einstein’s work] centers on his Theory of Relativity. This pertains to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles. It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it wholeheartedly.”51 For a moment, their debate dragged matters of time out of the solid terrain of “matters of fact” and into the shaky ground of “matters of concern.”52 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3210598/canales-Einstein,%20Bergson%20and%20the%20Experiment%20that%20Failed%282%29.pdf?sequence=2 Einstein vs Bergson, science vs philosophy and the meaning of time - Wednesday 24 June 2015 Excerpt: The meeting of April 6 was supposed to be a cordial affair, though it ended up being anything but. ‘I have to say that day exploded and it was referenced over and over again in the 20th century,’ says Canales. ‘The key sentence was something that Einstein said: “The time of the philosophers did not exist.”’ It’s hard to know whether Bergson was expecting such a sharp jab. In just one sentence, Bergson’s notion of duration—a major part of his thesis on time—was dealt a mortal blow. As Canales reads it, the line was carefully crafted for maximum impact. ‘What he meant was that philosophers frequently based their stories on a psychological approach and [new] physical knowledge showed that these philosophical approaches were nothing more than errors of the mind.’ The night would only get worse. ‘This was extremely scandalous,’ says Canales. ‘Einstein had been invited by philosophers to speak at their society, and you had this physicist say very clearly that their time did not exist.’ Bergson was outraged, but the philosopher did not take it lying down. A few months later Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the law of photoelectric effect, an area of science that Canales noted, ‘hardly jolted the public’s imagination’. In truth, Einstein coveted recognition for his work on relativity. Bergson inflicted some return humiliation of his own. By casting doubt on Einstein’s theoretical trajectory, Bergson dissuaded the committee from awarding the prize for relativity. In 1922, the jury was still out on the correct interpretation of time. So began a dispute that festered for years and played into the larger rift between physics and philosophy, science and the humanities. Bergson was fond of saying that time was the experience of waiting for a lump of sugar to dissolve in a glass of water. It was a declaration that one could not talk about time without reference to human consciousness and human perception. Einstein would say that time is what clocks measure. Bergson would no doubt ask why we build clocks in the first place. ‘He argued that if we didn’t have a prior sense of time we wouldn’t have been led to build clocks and we wouldn’t even use them ... unless we wanted to go places and to events that mattered,’ says Canales. ‘You can see that their points of view were very different.’ In a theoretical nutshell this expressed perfectly the division between lived time and spacetime: subjective experience versus objective reality.,,, Just when Einstein thought he had it worked out, along came the discovery of quantum theory and with it the possibility of a Bergsonian universe of indeterminacy and change. God did, it seems, play dice with the universe, contra to Einstein’s famous aphorism. Some supporters went as far as to say that Bergson’s earlier work anticipated the quantum revolution of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg by four decades or more. Canales quotes the literary critic Andre Rousseaux, writing at the time of Bergson’s death. ‘The Bergson revolution will be doubled by a scientific revolution that, on its own, would have demanded the philosophical revolution that Bergson led, even if he had not done it.’ Was Bergson right after all? Time will tell. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/science-vs-philosophy-and-the-meaning-of-time/6539568
Moreover, the statement Einstein made to Carnap on the train, 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, was an interesting statement for Einstein to make to the philosopher since 'the now of the mind' has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, established itself as very much being a defining part of physical measurement in quantum mechanics. As the following researcher stated, "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,"
Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice) quantum experiment confirms - Mind = blown. - FIONA MACDONALD - 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms
The Theistic implications of (delayed choice) experiments such as this are fairly obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
“Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” – Scott Aaronson – MIT associate Professor quantum computation - Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables
Moreover, besides that direct experimental refutation of Einstein’s claim that 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, Quantum Mechanics also now confirms Stanley Jaki’s contention that “There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. ” Specifically, the ability of the mind to extend to past moments and imagine its future are reflected in recent experiments verifying the ‘spooky’ actions of quantum mechanics. As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following article entitled “Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past”, “quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events"
Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past - April 23, 2012 Excerpt: According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as "spooky action at a distance". The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. "Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events", says Anton Zeilinger. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html Qubits that never interact could exhibit past-future entanglement – July 30, 2012 Excerpt: Typically, for two particles to become entangled, they must first physically interact. Then when the particles are physically separated and still share the same quantum state, they are considered to be entangled. But in a new study, physicists have investigated a new twist on entanglement in which two qubits become entangled with each other even though they never physically interact.,, http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qubits-interact-past-future-entanglement.html Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past July 5, 2017 by Lisa Zyga Excerpt: retrocausality means that, when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which to measure a particle, that decision can influence the properties of that particle (or another particle) in the past, even before the experimenter made their choice. In other words, a decision made in the present can influence something in the past. https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-retrocausal-quantum-theory-future.html
And as the following article states, “Not only can two events be correlated, linking the earlier one to the later one, but two events can become correlated such that it becomes impossible to say which is earlier and which is later.,,,”
Quantum Weirdness Now a Matter of Time – 2016 Bizarre quantum bonds connect distinct moments in time, suggesting that quantum links — not space-time — constitute the fundamental structure of the universe. Excerpt: Not only can two events be correlated, linking the earlier one to the later one, but two events can become correlated such that it becomes impossible to say which is earlier and which is later.,,, “If you have space-time, you have a well-defined causal order,” said Caslav Brukner, a physicist at the University of Vienna who studies quantum information. But “if you don’t have a well-defined causal order,” he said — as is the case in experiments he has proposed — then “you don’t have space-time.”,,, Quantum correlations come first, space-time later. Exactly how does space-time emerge out of the quantum world? Bruner said he is still unsure. https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160119-time-entanglement/
And as Professor Crull states in the following article “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time - Feb. 2018 Excerpt: Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps. The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality refers to the entanglement of properties across space. But what if entanglement also occurs across time? Is there such a thing as temporal nonlocality?,,, The data revealed the existence of quantum correlations between ‘temporally nonlocal’ photons 1 and 4. That is, entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted. What on Earth can this mean? Prima facie, it seems as troubling as saying that the polarity of starlight in the far-distant past – say, greater than twice Earth’s lifetime – nevertheless influenced the polarity of starlight falling through your amateur telescope this winter. Even more bizarrely: maybe it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old. https://aeon.co/ideas/you-thought-quantum-mechanics-was-weird-check-out-entangled-time
bornagain77
March 26, 2019
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Nightlight states:
Me: Yet, that is not (what) science reveals. In no uncertain terms, quantum mechanics reveals that my decision whether, and how, to consciously observe elementary particles or not takes precedence over the existence and even the state of elementary particles: NL: Quantum mechanics reveals nothing of the sort. There is no “consciousness” attribute or quantity in present natural science. It symply doesn’t exist as far as natural science knows. Hence QM, which is a field of natural science, doesn’t and can’t say anything about consciousness.
Well, that is the first and primary place, out of a myriad of other places, that you are completely wrong in your base assumptions. But there is no reason for you to feel too bad, Einstein himself also falsely believed that "There is no “consciousness” attribute or quantity in present natural science." But before we get into the specifics of that particular belief of Einstein, let's make a few things about consciousness clear. Dr. Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon as well as professor of neurosurgery at SUNY, Stony Brook, states the irreconcilable properties of mind compared to the material brain as such:
The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Michael Egnor - 2008 Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: - Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super013961.html
Likewise, J. Warner Wallace has a similar list, (but not exact match to Dr. Egnor's list), of the irreconcilable properties of mind compared to the material brain:
Six reasons why you should believe in non-physical minds - 01/30/2014 1) First-person access to mental properties 2) Our experience of consciousness implies that we are not our bodies 3) Persistent self-identity through time 4) Mental properties cannot be measured like physical objects 5) Intentionality or About-ness 6) Free will and personal responsibility http://winteryknight.com/2014/01/30/six-reasons-why-you-should-believe-in-non-physical-minds/
For our purposes of demonstrating that certain properties of our immaterial mind and/or consciousness are irreconcilable with materialism and are yet consistent with quantum mechanics, I will focus on three primary, even defining, attributes of consciousness, i.e. Qualia, Persistence of Self-Identity through time (and/or 'the experience of 'the Now''), and free will, respectfully. It is often pointed out to atheistic materialists, in “the hard problem” of consciousness, that the specific mental attribute of qualia,,
“what it is like to taste a specific apple, this particular apple now”. Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky.,, – pre wikipedia
,,, that the specific mental attribute of qualia will forever be beyond any possible materialistic explanation and/or to any possible physical examination. That is to say that qualia will never be reducible to physical ‘brain states’.
David Chalmers on Consciousness (Descartes, Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo ‘But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.’ David Barash – Materialist/Atheist - evolutionary biologist and professor of psychology at the ­University of Washington
In fact, the specific mental attribute of qualia is such a hard problem of consciousness for materialistic scientists to try to explain, that many materialistic scientists, (and philosophers), will often claim that 'consciousness is an illusion' and that it does not really exist.
The Consciousness Deniers - Galen Strawson - March 13, 2018 Excerpt: What is the silliest claim ever made? The competition is fierce, but I think the answer is easy. Some people have denied the existence of consciousness: conscious experience, the subjective character of experience, the “what-it-is-like” of experience.,,, ,,, I need to comment on what is being denied—consciousness, conscious experience, experience for short. What is it? Anyone who has ever seen or heard or smelled anything knows what it is; anyone who has ever been in pain, or felt hungry or hot or cold or remorseful, dismayed, uncertain, or sleepy, or has suddenly remembered a missed appointment. All these things involve what are sometimes called “qualia”—that is to say, different types or qualities of conscious experience. What I am calling the Denial is the denial that anyone has ever really had any of these experiences. Perhaps it’s not surprising that most Deniers deny that they’re Deniers. “Of course, we agree that consciousness or experience exists,” they say—but when they say this they mean something that specifically excludes qualia. Who are the Deniers? I have in mind—at least—those who fully subscribe to something called “philosophical behaviorism” as well as those who fully subscribe to something called “functionalism” in the philosophy of mind. Few have been fully explicit in their denial, but among those who have been, we find Brian Farrell, Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and the generally admirable Daniel Dennett. Ned Block once remarked that Dennett’s attempt to fit consciousness or “qualia” into his theory of reality “has the relation to qualia that the US Air Force had to so many Vietnamese villages: he destroys qualia in order to save them.” One of the strangest things the Deniers say is that although it seems that there is conscious experience, there isn’t really any conscious experience: the seeming is, in fact, an illusion. The trouble with this is that any such illusion is already and necessarily an actual instance of the thing said to be an illusion. http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/ “We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good.” Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor
But the claim from materialistic scientists that 'consciousness is an illusion' is a blatantly self-refuting claim. As David Bentley Hart states, “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.”
The Illusionist - Daniel Dennett’s latest book marks five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness. - 2017 “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.” – David Bentley Hart https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist
And whereas the mental attribute of qualia absolutely refuses to be reducible to any possible materialistic explanation, or physical measurement, the other mental attributes I listed of ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’ (and/or 'the experience of 'the Now''), and ‘free will’, both of those mental attributes, unlike qualia, do lend themselves to physical measurement. As to the mental attribute of the ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’ (and/or 'the experience of 'the Now''), Stanley Jaki states that "There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows."
The Mind and Its Now - Stanley L. Jaki, May 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind's baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now
And 'the experience of 'the now'' happens to be exactly where Einstein got into trouble with philosophers and also with quantum mechanics. Einstein was once asked by Rudolf Carnap (a philosopher):
"Can physics demonstrate the existence of 'the now' in order to make the notion of 'now' into a scientifically valid term?"
Einstein's answer was categorical, he said:
"The experience of 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics."
Quote was taken from the last few minutes of this following video.
Stanley L. Jaki: "The Mind and Its Now" https://vimeo.com/10588094
And here is an article that goes into bit more detail of that encounter between Einstein and Rudolf Carnap:
The Mind and Its Now – May 22, 2008 – By Stanley L. Jaki Excerpt: ,,, Rudolf Carnap, and the only one among them who was bothered with the mind’s experience of its now. His concern for this is noteworthy because he went about it in the wrong way. He thought that physics was the only sound way to know and to know anything. It was therefore only logical on his part that he should approach, we are around 1935, Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist of the day, with the question whether it was possible to turn the experience of the now into a scientific knowledge. Such knowledge must of course be verified with measurement. We do not have the exact record of Carnap’s conversation with Einstein whom he went to visit in Princeton, at eighteen hours by train at that time from Chicago. But from Einstein’s reply which Carnap jotted down later, it is safe to assume that Carnap reasoned with him as outlined above. Einstein’s answer was categorical: The experience of the now cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement. It can never be part of physics. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now
bornagain77
March 26, 2019
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Yet, that is not science reveals. In no uncertain terms, quantum mechanics reveals that my decision whether, and how, to consciously observe elementary particles or not takes precedence over the existence and even the state of elementary particles: Quantum mechanics reveals nothing of the sort. There is no "consciousness" attribute or quantity in present natural science. It symply doesn't exist as far as natural science knows. Hence QM, which is a field of natural science, doesn't and can't say anything about consciousness. You are confusing free style philosophical speculations by some physicists or by pseudo-scientific hucksters or by new age gurus ... with natural science. if a bunch of elementary particles and atoms consciously decided to build me (and everybody else) as some type of ‘large scale robot’ project Well, who built you? Cells? But cells are built by atoms & molecules (presently via the most advanced technology for that task that atoms have created -- the parent cells), which in turn are built by elementary particles/quantum fields. There is no "dumb matter" at any level. How does electron know how to detect fields and particles around it and calculate how to act with incredible precision? There is underlying computational substratum (of neural network type) that computes all that. The part of these underlying algorithms that present science understands is called "natural law", while the much larger part of these algorithms that is not understood/known is euphemistically called "initial and boundary conditions" (IBC, the free parameters, numbers, hand put into the physics algorithm [formulas + IBCs] of present physics). There are no such holes filled in by hand put numbers or random distributions, in the real physics algorithm, the one that makes Universe go. It is the IBCs that distinguish "intelligent" systems/actions from "dumb" ones. E.g. when a basketball player throws a ball, the IBCs for the ball yield a trajectory into the hoop, while a random/aimless throw will likely miss the hoop. The first one is classified as intelligent action, while the latter a "dumb" action. In physics, whenever we deal with more than few particles, since we lack techniques/smarts/technologies to measure IBCs or compute them or control them, we simply hand put random (dumb) distribution for IBCs and at best calculate only some statistical aspects of the system behavior. That is why the origin of life is such a major puzzle for the present science -- one cannot create complex, well coordinated system such as cell, by assuming random/dumb IBCs for atoms (as we have to do now, due to our limitations) -- the odds for creation of such system are much too small. On the other hand, cells are created all the time from food molecues and that is no mystery, since the IBCs for the process in that case are set by the parent cell, not as random/dumb distribution but as very specialized IBCs computed to yield the new live cell. Hence we have dumb/random IBCs (put by hand as random distribution into the present physics algorithm) which can't create live cell from food molecules, and intelligent IBCs (set by parent cell), which can create live cell from food molecules. Unlike our present physics algorithm (laws + fudge factor/IBCs), the real physics algorithm of molecules (that doesn't have fudge numbers/IBCs) can create live cell from molecules -- that is perfectly evident (e.g. they are doing it now in every organism). In computational/NKS perspective of Universe and natural sciences describing it, the origin of life problem is not whether "dumb molecules" can create live cell (it is plainly evident that they can, they are doing it right now in you and me), but what was the hierarchy of technologies the molecules used to create the first live cell. We know that one technology to create live cells from food molecules exists (the parent live cells, i.e. the latest technology molecules created for such production). But for the first live cell, we need to find what was the more primitive technology than parent cell, that molecules used for the first one. This is analogous to us using metal machinery to mine and transport ores, then to smelt them and build such metal tools. We don't jump to conclusion here that there is paradox or impenetrable probabilistic wall in question "how did ores became the first metal machinery for mining & processing ores into metals". The answer is obvious -- more primitive technology than metal machinery was used before the first metal machinery was created. The same goes for creating the first live cell -- more primitive technology than parent cell was used for that one. We just don't know yet what that more primitive technology was (it was likely not a single one, but a hierarchy of technologies, each one used to build the next, more advanced technology e.g. a hierarchy of increasingly more complex replicators).nightlight
March 26, 2019
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Nightlight, if a bunch of elementary particles and atoms consciously decided to build me (and everybody else) as some type of 'large scale robot' project (for whatever reason they may have decided to take up such a large 'super colossal' scale project), that would mean that elementary particles would take precedence over whatever conscious observation I may make of them. Yet, that is not science reveals. In no uncertain terms, quantum mechanics reveals that my decision whether, and how, to consciously observe elementary particles or not takes precedence over the existence and even the state of elementary particles: "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott ,,,, to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness,"
Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness - May 27, 2015 Excerpt: The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler's experiment then asks - at which point does the object decide? Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found. "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. Despite the apparent weirdness, the results confirm the validity of quantum theory, which,, has enabled the development of many technologies such as LEDs, lasers and computer chips. The ANU team not only succeeded in building the experiment, which seemed nearly impossible when it was proposed in 1978, but reversed Wheeler's original concept of light beams being bounced by mirrors, and instead used atoms scattered by laser light. "Quantum physics' predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said Roman Khakimov, PhD student at the Research School of Physics and Engineering. http://phys.org/news/2015-05-quantum-theory-weirdness.html
Bottom line Nightlight, your model, (a model which would make science fiction writers blush in embarrassment), is, as far as hard science itself is concerned, irredeemably false. We are not just passive observers!
“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” Anton Zeilinger – Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437
bornagain77
March 25, 2019
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PaV- It seemed that Dr. Sermonti was saying that the queen "talks" to her colony and provides the instructions via communication. He seems to be saying that the queen and queen alone can tap into the Creator's information stream for termites. And then, in turn, transmit that to her team. That is why they stop when she dies- the transmission stops.ET
March 25, 2019
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Who knew a 'large scale robot' could be so easily offended? :)bornagain77
March 25, 2019
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Nightlight, like all ‘true believers’ in atheistic materialism Being individualist & libertarian I don't resonate well with churchianism (the so called organized religions i.e. the parasitic layer infesting spiritual aspects of humans in most, perhaps all, social organisms, analogous to scientism parasite infesting sciences). But not everyone unafflicted by the churchianism is atheist (this is one among cognitively enfeebling delusions that the parasite injects into the brains of its victims). continue to spout his baseless nonsense as if it were not the complete and utter insanity that it actually is. I see that Dunning–Kruger effect is well and alive here.nightlight
March 25, 2019
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and right on cue:
Molecules are smarter than us for that kind of problems. We are after all, their large scale robots they designed and built (using intermediary scale technologies, such as cells, they also designed and built before that), to carry out a specialized subset of tasks, kind of idiot savants.
Like I said at the end of post 20:
And again, I’m fairly certain that nightlight is not concerned in the least with my criticism that his model is based on pure fantasy, and that it has no real logical or empirical basis. Nightlight, like all ‘true believers’ in atheistic materialism, will in all likelihood continue to ignore me and everyone else who challenges his worldview and continue to spout his baseless nonsense as if it were not the complete and utter insanity that it actually is.
bornagain77
March 25, 2019
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For nightlight to point to life and say that proves “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence” is to completely miss the point. You miss the point of my post. The molecules presently create live cells from food molecules using their best current technology for that task, the parent cells they constructed earlier. This is no different than metal trucks and metal machinery being presently used to create more metal trucks and metal machinery. There is noting puzzling or self-contradictory in observation that creation of the first metal truck didn't use metal truck. In that case we understand how the first metal truck was built without having metal truck, what chain of technologies led to such first metal truck. But in case of cells, the present science doesn't know yet what chain of technologies created by molecules led to their more advanced technology, the "live cell". Molecules are smarter than us for that kind of problems. We are after all, their large scale robots they designed and built (using intermediary scale technologies, such as cells, they also designed and built before that), to carry out a specialized subset of tasks, kind of idiot savants. This is analogous to us building computers, which are savants for certain specialized problems/tasks, while being idiots for the rest of the problems/tasks.nightlight
March 24, 2019
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Let’s ‘cut to the chase’: is intelligence material, or not? Yes, the "dumb matter" is intelligent. Of course you need something to create the initial system. Science is never complete, it needs to postulate that initial system and its properties which are taken for granted. The difference in economy of assumtions between different proposed sets of postulates is what makes the difference in their value -- the more economical assumptions are preferable. The hypothesis of NKS approach (see post #7 for links to earlier much longer description & discussion) is the most economical assumption, since it starts with simple, dumb automata (which could be 2 state, on/off, automatons) at Planck scale that can replicate and connect to other simple automata, forming thus random networks. Such system, described mathematically as neural network, then builds up intelligence automatically as it runs, provided it has some global objective, such as maximizing harmony (i.e. minimizing surprise or maximizing predictability) between different parts of such network (sub-networks). The target state is similar to that of Leibniz monads, except that latter already have pre-established harmony, while the networks here seek to establish such harmony. Note that no further intelligence needs to be postulated/added at larger scale -- the intelligence builds up automatically from small to large, from inside out, as each layer constructs technology to achieve greater harmony at the next larger scale. For example humans create network at their 'next larger scale', technological societies, that allows harmonizing of previously non-harmonized/independent systems, e.g. internet and computers allow multiple humans to harmonize mutual actions at much farther distances and more quickly than it was possible before computers and internet. E.g. this forum harmonizes (some) actions of humans spread around the world. Note also that the creator of the postulated initial Planck scale network has no idea what solution (of maximized harmony of the creation) the network will compute i.e. the creator is not omniscient. It delegates, as it were, the computation that seeks to maximize harmony of the creation to the creation itself. The creator only needs to be able to create neural network and provide it an objective. This is far more economical creator than the omniscient creator of conventional deism or theism i.e. this approach leaves much less outside of science than those alternatives which leave outside of science a super-intelligent creator who precomputes creation in advance and in full detail. The creator in NKS approach can be much simpler and dumber.nightlight
March 24, 2019
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nightlight claimed that
Similarly, molecules, atoms and elementary particles are smart enough to design and build what we call life, as another galactic scale technology from their scale up. The boundary between so called life and dumb dead matter is a temporary misconception we currently have. There is no dumb dead matter.
To which I pointed out the obvious fact that no one has ever seen "dumb dead matter" create life. In other words, nightlight has exactly zero empirical evidence that 'dumb dead matter' can create life. In fact I asked nightlight,
Me: provide some, ANY, empirical evidence that inanimate matter can create life???
To which nightlight responded with this non-sequitur
NL: The “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence.
Yet the claim from nightlight was that,,,
molecules, atoms and elementary particles are smart enough to design and build what we call life,
The claim from nightlight was not that,,,
“dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence.
Perhaps nightlight just does not know the difference between inanimate matter and a living organism???
inanimate adjective Not having the qualities associated with active, living organisms.
As pointed out in post 8 via James Tour, no one has a clue how life arose. For nightlight to point to life and say that proves “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence" is to completely miss the point. In fact it is get it completely backwards. It is claim that life explains where life came from instead of claiming that 'dumb dead matter' explains where life came from, which was nightlight's original claim. Moreover, even if I did grant nightlight's huge non-sequitur, i.e. that “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence", even if I granted that huge non-sequitur, as I pointed put in post 10 and 11, 'quantum biology', due to quantum non-locality, requires a cause that is beyond space and time,,,
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php ,,,,, As a Christian, I have a beyond space and time cause that I can appeal to in order to explain these beyond space and time quantum correlations (within molecular biology). Whereas, reductive materialists, i.e. Darwinists, (as nightlight himself made clear in his post at 7 where he attributed god-like intelligence to ‘dumb dead matter’), don’t have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to in order to explain these quantum correlations. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/please-pass-the-blueprints/#comment-674779 Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
nightlight may adamantly believe that the elementary particles themselves are somehow causing these quantum correlations within molecular biology, but he simply has no empirical evidence whatsoever that what are termed 'hidden variables' are real. Besides multiple mathematical theorems that have all but proven that hidden variables between particles do not exist, it has now also been experimentally confirmed that “entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do.”
Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016 DISCUSSION Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,, Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600162.full
So again, empirical evidence establishes that material particles cannot explain quantum correlations within molecular biology and thus a beyond space and time cause must be appealed to in order to explain what we are seeing in quantum mechanics generally and quantum biology specifically. In short, nightlight's model of “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence" does not have the causal adequacy within itself to explain what we are seeing in quantum biology. Another interesting thing in nightlight's non-sequitur argument is that he, (unlike most reductive materialists who hold matter to indeed be dead as a door nail and dumb as a rock), is holding to panpsychism
"molecules, atoms and elementary particles are smart enough to design and build what we call life," pan·psy·chism noun the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.
Just how smart the elementary particle may be in nightlight's model nightlight does not say. Although he does insinuate that they are way smarter than we may fancy ourselves to be since, obviously, they can create life and we can't,,,
"molecules, atoms and elementary particles are smart enough to design and build what we call life, as another galactic scale technology from their scale up."
I know that listening to what I may have to say in critique of his non-conventional views is not a very big concern on nightlight's part, but none-the-less if I were given a chance to give him a piece of advice in ascertaining exactly how smart his elementary particles may be in his model, I would suggest that he go for full blown omniscience within each elementary particle! Such as they have previously done within Everett's many world's interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. In the MWI, not only are the elementary particles smart enough to create life, but by golly they are so smart that they can create entire universes! Now THAT is a smart elementary particle! :) Many Worlds truly exposes reductive materialism in all its full blown absurdity. i.e. The material particle is given so much unmerited power in the many worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that every time someone observes a particle, instead of the wave function merely collapsing, the particle instead creates a virtual infinity of parallel universes.
Too many worlds - Philip Ball - Feb. 17, 2015 Excerpt:,,, You measure the path of an electron, and in this world it seems to go this way, but in another world it went that way. That requires a parallel, identical apparatus for the electron to traverse. More – it requires a parallel you to measure it. Once begun, this process of fabrication has no end: you have to build an entire parallel universe around that one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went. You avoid the complication of wavefunction collapse, but at the expense of making another universe.,,, http://aeon.co/magazine/science/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis-just-a-fantasy/
i.e. Many worlds is basically saying that, instead of God, the material particle has somehow bestowed within itself the omniscient power to create as many universes as it wants or needs to in order to ‘explain away' wave function collapse! In short, atheistic materialist, (whether they are professing panpsychism or not), have tried to turn elementary particles into God,,
Atheism and the remarkable faith of the atomist - by Dave Armstrong • May 12, 2016 Excerpt: In reality, atheistic belief is,,, a kind of polytheistic idolatry of the crudest, most primitive sort. The ancient Babylonians, Philistines, Aztecs, and other groups believed that their silver amulets and wooden idols could make the sun shine, defeat an enemy or cause crops to flourish. The polytheistic materialist, on the other hand, believes trillions of “atom-gods” and their distant relatives, the “cell-gods,” make everything in the universe occur by their own power, possessed eternally either in full or (who knows how?) in inevitably unfolding potentiality. One might call this (to coin a phrase) Atomism (“belief that the atom is god”). To the atomist, trillions of omnipotent, omniscient atoms can do absolutely everything that the Christian God can do, and for little or no reason that anyone can understand (i.e., why and how the atom-god came to possess such powers in the first place). The atomist openly and unreservedly worships these trillions of gods, with the most perfect, trusting, non-rational faith. He or she is what sociologists call a “true believer.” http://www.themichigancatholic.org/2016/05/atheism-remarkable-faith-atomist/
The overriding trouble with nightlight's view in particular, i.e. that elementary particles 'may' be omniscient is that, in quantum mechanics, omniscience precedes the collapse of the wave function to its finite state of being an elementary particle. That is to say, a preexistent, and necessarily existing, omniscient Mind explains why the contingent elementary particle(s) exists in the first place.
Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the superposition of the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/#2.1 Double Slit, Quantum-Electrodynamics, and Christian Theism- video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK9kGpIxMRM
Thus nightlight's model fails on many different empirical and logical levels. And again, I'm fairly certain that nightlight is not concerned in the least with my criticism that his model is based on pure fantasy, and that it has no real logical or empirical basis. Nightlight, like all 'true believers' in atheistic materialism, will in all likelihood continue to ignore me and everyone else who challenges his worldview and continue to spout his baseless nonsense as if it were not the complete and utter insanity that it actually is. Verse:
Psalm 147:5 Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite. Phillips, Craig & Dean - You Are God Alone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPzTSpbYmk
bornagain77
March 24, 2019
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NightLight: Let's 'cut to the chase': is intelligence material, or not?PaV
March 24, 2019
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ET: Yes, I read Sermonti's book some time back. Refresh my memory. However, note this: if it is proteins from the queen that determines what the workers do, nonetheless this information has to be stored somewhere in the genome. That was the upshot of what I wrote.PaV
March 24, 2019
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nightlight:
Cells build new cells to the same degree that you build new human by having a sex.
Intelligent Design it is, then, all the way down.ET
March 24, 2019
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Cells do what they were intelligently designed to do- and in the case of metazoans that means create new cells from food molecules. Cells build new cells to the same degree that you build new human by having a sex. That's your contribution, minor as it is, being the 'galactic' scale (relative to cellular scale) AI robot built by the intelligent agents (your cells) to serve their needs, which includes a help in building new robots similar to you. The contribution of cells in building new large scale robots like us is vastly greater than our own. But, just as your contribution to this technological project (of building new gigantic robots similar to you) is trivial compared to the contribution of the intelligent agents (your cells) that have built you (and which run you), this cellular contribution to the project is equally trivial to that of the underlying, trillions of times smaller intelligent agents (the so-called "dumb matter" i.e. the molecules) that have built those cells from the food molecules. For the latter agents, molecules, this is a vastly larger technological project -- they build galactic scale intelligent robots (cells) capable of helping them build even larger robots such as humans.nightlight
March 24, 2019
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nightlight:
The “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence. Namely, thousands of new “live” cells were created from “non-live dumb matter” (from food molecules) while you were reading previous sentence. The live, intelligent agents (molecules) have utilized for this task their galactic scale technology, their previously constructed intelligent robots (parent cells) in your body.
Cells do what they were intelligently designed to do- and in the case of metazoans that means create new cells from food molecules.ET
March 24, 2019
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Ha ha ha ha ha ???? ???? ???? Keep at it, it's good for your health. See here.nightlight
March 24, 2019
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Ha ha ha
Me: provide some, ANY, empirical evidence that inanimate matter can create life??? NL: The “dumb matter” has created “life” thousands of times in your own body by the time you read this sentence.
Ha ha ha ha ha :) :) :) Ha ha ha ha ha :) :) :) Oh man! Ha ha ha ha ha :) :) Whew boy,, Ohhh, Ha ha ha ha ha :) :) :) Oh Oh, ha ha ha ha ha, :) I got tears laughing so hard.bornagain77
March 24, 2019
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