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Take a random number ranging from one to one billion and no matter what you get, that one number is special because the chances of getting it again are one to one billion.
We as humans are synonymous to this. We are all the same only by means of one single quality: our exclusive individuality. Each one of us is special because we are derived from an endless and unquantifiable spectrum, where the limitless possibilities of life compete to produce that one specific person. The smallest possible deviation can saturate even the entire planet with new and different possibilities. You are only here, existing and cognitive, because of the very exact means of all the lives before you, that given another chance could never have happened the same way again. And each life that follows us grows exponentially more special as the spectrum grows deeper, spiraling to unimaginable depths.
 
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Isn't physics deterministic though? And being in a deterministic universe, everything is predictable and therefore not unique. Am I not right?
Also if you pick a number from one to one billion, aren't the odds of getting that number again really high like one in a billion?
Are you trying to say something? I can't tell if this is a poem, a stream of conciousness, a methaphor or a simple statement.
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Deep. It's human awareness, and I like to think about these things too. I find it sad when I can't express these thoughts with others who seem to be uninterested in these type of things. But there's always others out there who think about this too.
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On January 22 2011 07:57 darmousseh wrote:
Isn't physics deterministic though? And being in a deterministic universe, everything is predictable and therefore not unique. Am I not right?
Also if you pick a number from one to one billion, aren't the odds of getting that number again really high like one in a billion?
Are you trying to say something? I can't tell if this is a poem, a stream of conciousness, a methaphor or a simple statement.
predictable means not unique? I don't see that correlation. And anyway, physics is certainly not deterministic, not in any useful sense of the word. At the quantum level there is always uncertainty which leads to the impossibility of prediction which because of chaos theory (similar to butterfly effect) escalates to more uncertainty...
Very nice piece of writing, it's worth reading slowly.
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darmousseh: Are the thoughts and decisions of a cognizant being deterministic?
I'm not really saying anything. I'm just blogging my thoughts! 
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Life is pretty neat, because in an awesome way every person alive was #1 atleast once.. The race to the egg as a sperm!
Haha, all jokes aside, there are so many pieces and elements to how we are put together. If you sit and think about all we are made up of and how many different systems and things are happening all at once all the time at ourselves it's pretty awesome.
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This also means that, as Dinosaur Comics states, we are most certainly not in the best of all possible worlds. Special? Sure. Good, desirable or even above average? Maybe, but you only have a 50-50 shot.
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You are the aggregate of all history before you.
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On January 22 2011 07:50 enigmaticcam wrote:
And each life that follows us grows exponentially more special as the spectrum grows deeper, spiraling to unimaginable depths.
Totally meaningless.
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On January 22 2011 08:05 aidnai wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2011 07:57 darmousseh wrote:
Isn't physics deterministic though? And being in a deterministic universe, everything is predictable and therefore not unique. Am I not right?
Also if you pick a number from one to one billion, aren't the odds of getting that number again really high like one in a billion?
Are you trying to say something? I can't tell if this is a poem, a stream of conciousness, a methaphor or a simple statement. predictable means not unique? I don't see that correlation. And anyway, physics is certainly not deterministic, not in any useful sense of the word. At the quantum level there is always uncertainty which leads to the impossibility of prediction which because of chaos theory (similar to butterfly effect) escalates to more uncertainty... Very nice piece of writing, it's worth reading slowly.
Uhm, chaos theory has to do with determining a state based on the initial conditions. There is no randomness involved, or to quote einstein "God does not roll dice". Read the wikipeida article on chaos theory. Here's a sample from wikipedia
Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved
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On January 22 2011 08:05 enigmaticcam wrote:darmousseh: Are the thoughts and decisions of a cognizant being deterministic? I'm not really saying anything. I'm just blogging my thoughts!
Yes.
Information comes in, information is processed by your brain, thoughts are the result of chemical reactions and the information that currently exists.
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On January 22 2011 08:42 darmousseh wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2011 08:05 enigmaticcam wrote:darmousseh: Are the thoughts and decisions of a cognizant being deterministic? I'm not really saying anything. I'm just blogging my thoughts! Yes. Information comes in, information is processed by your brain, thoughts are the result of chemical reactions and the information that currently exists.
I don't see how this proves they're deterministic.
I'm certainly not an expert, but as aidnai said, at the quantum level, is not prediction impossible?
"The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you." - Leto II from Frank Herbert's "Children of Dune".
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would you rather be number 1828391 or number 1000000000?
all people are special, only some are better than others.
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On January 22 2011 09:08 enigmaticcam wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2011 08:42 darmousseh wrote:On January 22 2011 08:05 enigmaticcam wrote:darmousseh: Are the thoughts and decisions of a cognizant being deterministic? I'm not really saying anything. I'm just blogging my thoughts! Yes. Information comes in, information is processed by your brain, thoughts are the result of chemical reactions and the information that currently exists. I don't see how this proves they're deterministic. I'm certainly not an expert, but as aidnai said, at the quantum level, is not prediction impossible? "The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you." - Leto II from Frank Herbert's "Children of Dune".
We cannot predict things at the quantum level because it is impossible to observe it without changing it.
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On January 22 2011 07:57 darmousseh wrote:
Isn't physics deterministic though? And being in a deterministic universe, everything is predictable and therefore not unique. Am I not right?
Classical physics is deterministic, quantum mechanics is probabilistic (and as real as semiconductor circuits, I'm sure you've seen the xkcd comic http://xkcd.com/808/ )
Sorry I didn't read the entire thread, you seem pretty aware of all this.
Though free will is still up in the air, I personally don't believe in it but I think it's an irrelevant belief anyhow.
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On January 22 2011 10:06 Soulish wrote:
would you rather be number 1828391 or number 1000000000?
all people are special, only some are better than others.
0 being the first human I don't think anyone here can be number 1828391 or number 1000000000 lol
But we humans invented the number system...
I mean physics,math,etc are just a mean to explain it in human terms right? We take what we see and try to put it in an understandable/comprehensible fashion. Maybe the way we were built/designed disables us from truly understanding how the universe works. (just like how zerglings don't know who their leader Gracken is and probably how they got there...I'll admit this wasn't the best comparison but I wanted to make it somewhat relatable to SC lol)
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PARALLEL UNIVERSES, FUCK YEAH!!!!!
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For you people wondering about determinism of the mind and of the universe:
Current physics is certainly not complete in it's description of the universe. Classical physics as we know it evolves deterministically, although quantum physics has a probabilistic property to it in the event of "observation." As far as I know, the act of "observation" is not understood on a physical level (as in, what in the physical universe makes an observation). I have read a book by Penrose which postulates that the act of observation might be explained in the yet undiscovered theory of quantum gravity. Perhaps it is this future theory which is not deterministic. But hey, nobody knows what that theory will hold at this point. Really, it's silly to be sure of whether the universe is deterministic or not when we know so little about it. I think the majority viewpoint among physicists is that the universe will be deterministic, but there are dissenting opinions, such as that of Penrose.
As for the determinism of the mind, most scientists believe that the mind must work on classical laws. This would imply that the mind is deterministic and there is no free will (maybe the illusion of free will can exist if we accept that chaos can play a role in thoughts). However, once again, there are dissenting opinions. There are some who believe that some form of quantum mechanics might play a role in the mind in unnforseen ways. Penrose believes that quantum gravity may have a role.
For more info on quantum considerations of the mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
Oh, and about the chaos thing. I believe what aidnai was trying to say was that it is impossible to predict the future of the universe because chaos theory makes the future evolution of the system depend on exact values of initial conditions, but quantum theory (uncertainty principle) prevents one from knowing the exact conditions of the universe at any one point in time. If this is true, and applied to the mind, then at least the illusion of free will would exist - since it would be impossible to predict (although still perhaps behaving deterministically).
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![[image loading]](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20101229.gif)
smbc = the best
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The first thing I thought of when I read the OP was a bunch of Dr. Manhattan's quotes from the movie and book, "Watchmen".
Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg. Come, dry your eyes. And let's go home.
This isn't the quote that made the movie so great. I actually felt that the doctor coming to the realization that life was something that happened and created beauty was forced. Manhattan was smarter than that. It seemed out of character.
But I thought it was pretty cool that you have almost the exact same argument.
My own thoughts are more like these:
In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon.
A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?
Life isn't something magical, it's just a phenomena that occurred. Life is just some sustainable structure. It finds ways to reproduce and therefore has existed for a long time.
Manhattan goes on to say somewhere else along the movie that if the earth were to disappear that, the universe would not care. Manhattan really has a way of putting your entire life into perspective.
For a second you try to think from the vantage point of an impartial observer. You won't see life on Earth, you'll just see a collection of sustainable systems. These systems won't have free thoughts, they'll have deterministic electrochemical reactions leading them to the illusion of free will (this is my own belief, I do not require everyone else to see things this way).
I personally, realize that I can't really see the world from the perspective of an impartial observer. It's physically impossible to exit my body or mind. I can only imagine what it would be like to see things from some other perspective. For this reason, all my troubles, all my thoughts, they aren't just perceived to be important. To me, they are important.
One final thought on time.
There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.
The idea is that as long as things are deterministic, then what will happen in the future will happen with as much certainty as what has happened already in the past. We might as well not even have time.
Yeah, I'm just unloading some thoughts in an unstructured way, like everyone else is in this blog. Sorry if my thoughts are hard to understand.
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I have nothing to contribute to the blog but hahha that comic was hilarious thanks.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://blog.prospect.org/blog/weblog/Doctor%20Manhattan.jpg)
