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Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way. But i agree there is not much evidence for this at all, if anny. Its just speculation.
Not everyone here is a "college freshman" btw who thinks he "owns science" and it doesnt even matter. We are not trying to find the "truth" here. This is a rather casual forum, not a scientific one.
And even college freshmans who absolutely have no clue sometimes come up with verry interesting ideas
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Any argument you want to make with link to Chinese room ? First off it has not much bearing on the question of materialism vs dualism, just on the question of whether mind is "formal computation". Plus the whole Chinese room argument seems full of assumptions and simplifications and I do not think it is argument for anything.
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Pretty sure the brain doesn't work like a computer anyway.
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Pretty sure the brain doesn't work like a computer anyway.
Depend on how you define "work like".
Unless I missed something, this is useless.
"The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese?"
Whose to say that our brain doesn't "merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese". There is simply no difference between the two.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On July 03 2013 00:44 Djzapz wrote:
Pretty sure the brain doesn't work like a computer anyway.
One could argue that the brain not only works like one, but is just an instance of an analogue computer.
You're right in that it's not like a typical digital computer that we are used to seeing, but just because one small family of architectures of computers have become nearly ubiquitous today, does not mean that all computers have to be like that.
Just as semiconductor technology modulates electrical signal flow through a 'computer system', chemical processes (I'm sure many electrical ones too) modulate electrical signal flow through the brain.
Our brains don't deal in what we like to think of as binary data(or even digital data), but using chemically modulated processing of analogue electrical signals makes it no less of a valid computer.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On July 03 2013 00:54 DertoQq wrote:Depend on how you define "work like". Unless I missed something, this is useless. "The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese?" Whose to say that our brain doesn't "merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese". There is simply no difference between the two.
We can actually easily make the distinction between the two in this case.
Since in actual ability to understand Chinese, you decode the information being carried by the language, then assumedly in an intelligent conversation, you formulate an appropriate response, then encode it in Chinese.
Whereas in the case of 'simulating understanding Chinese' you would formulate a response without 'decoding' the message being carried by the Chinese, and simply formulate a response via some algorithm, while skipping the part about actually receiving the information being encoded in the Chinese.
A computing analogy would be in low level computer vision, in a simple image matching task. A computer could perform an actual object recognition and matching algorithm, or more reasonably it would do simple feature matching without having to recognise any of the objects. From the point of view of the programmer (or the Chinese speaker in the other scenario), you can easily make the distinction from actually receiving and understanding the information contained in the language/pixels, or just formulating a response via algorithm without actually unpacking the information.
Admittedly, from the point of view of an outside observer, it may very well be impossible to tell the difference with a good enough response without decoding algorithm, which was the point of the chinese room argument.
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On July 02 2013 21:54 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2013 20:36 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 19:21 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 19:19 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 17:11 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 16:33 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 02:36 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 02 2013 02:32 Cynry wrote:
[quote]
Now please explain how religion is not just another delusion ?
Also, one may not control the nature of emotions (anger is anger etc), but a lot can be achieved about what trigger said emotions. Religion could be delusion... sure. So what? There is no evidence to say that it is and some evidence to say that it isn't (though let's not get into that discussion). The whole point of determinism is that nothing whatsoever can be "achieved" about triggers or anything at all. What will occur will occur regardless of any non-existent "action" being taken by "actors" that aren't there. Efforts to avoid/embrace a specific turn of events are themselves predetermined, as is their eventual (and inevitable) efficacy. The face a coin will land on is determined at the moment you flip it, I think anyone can agree on that. Does it make it useless to flip a coin when you want to decide something ? Does it make it less random ? no. It doesn't change anything at all. This can be applied with your entire life or the universe, but it still doesn't change anything. "Determinism" is a kind of information that have no concrete effect. Of course it makes it less random, it isn't random at all. Just because you are incapable to predict if the coin will land heads or tails doesn't mean it's random. If it's determined how the coin will land when you flip it (because of the initial state of the coin, the hand, the force used, the current atmosphere etc), it's not random, there's a pattern to it. You can pretend that it is random, and use the illusion of randomness to make decisions for you, but it's still not random. It doesn't have to have a concrete effect, it's a philosophical concept. Either everything was decided more or less at the moment of big bang, or it wasn't. Either it's predetermined what I will do tommorrow at 3PM, or it isn't. We can't prove it and it's going to happen regardless, so it doesn't have any concrete effect. Then again, most philosophical questions do not. Random is a weird concept that doesn't mean much. I was using it in the sense of pseudo-randomness. Anyway, I was responding to people saying stuff like "Determinism make your life meaningless etc..". I was simply noting that it doesn't matter if you think flipping a coin is determined or not, it is still useful to flip a coin and it shouldn't affect your life whatsoever (ie: you're not losing any "meaning" of your life). The meaning of life is a philosophical question, whether you have a meaningful life or not is subjective and has no concrete effect. Yet it affects people a lot. My point is : You can believe in determinism and still find a meaning of life. Sure, or you can not. You can be a person who just finds it all meaningless if everything is predetermined. Saying "Flipping a coin is just as random" to a person who is of the philosophy that free will is important is just meaningless. Personally, I agree with you. I'm a determinist and I don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of people disagree. How can you be a determinist with all that quantum physics jazz going on. Not saying the world isnt deterministic, but if your main argument is science and then u have quantum physics in which one of the major concepts is "randomness", than it would make me at least raise an eyebrow. And determinism is an awfully depressing view at life if you think about it. I guess it was a rather legitimate way to see life up until quantum physics arrived, but now there is nothing appealing in it for me. You are assuming quantum phenomena play any role in how brain functions. Of course they play role in our cells and so on, but I meant that they "bubble up" to higher levels of function, that they are not "filtered" out on the lower levels. And nothing actually points to the fact that they play any significant role in that area. The same way as they do not play any significant role in me throwing a rock at something. So while quantum physics introduced non-determinism in the world at large, it does not necessarily change the deterministic nature of many systems. Plus randomness is no way less depressing view of life, isn't it ? How random dice rolls improve the view of life. They give absolutely no additional freedom to your life. It is actually the opposite, in deterministic view you, as in all your experience and character, are at least really the source of all the decisions and actions, although deterministic. In "quantum" random view many of your actions and decisions are just dice rolls. How is it more optimistic ?
Kinda what Rassy said:
On July 02 2013 22:00 Rassy wrote:
Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way.
Double slit experiment suggests that spectator is the one affecting the randomness so thats what I was going at.
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On July 03 2013 01:09 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 00:54 DertoQq wrote:Pretty sure the brain doesn't work like a computer anyway. Depend on how you define "work like". Unless I missed something, this is useless. "The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese?" Whose to say that our brain doesn't "merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese". There is simply no difference between the two. We can actually easily make the distinction between the two in this case. Since in actual ability to understand Chinese, you decode the information being carried by the language, then assumedly in an intelligent conversation, you formulate an appropriate response, then encode it in Chinese. Whereas in the case of 'simulating understanding Chinese' you would formulate a response without 'decoding' the message being carried by the Chinese, and simply formulate a response via some algorithm, while skipping the part about actually receiving the information being encoded in the Chinese. A computing analogy would be in low level computer vision, in a simple image matching task. A computer could perform an actual object recognition and matching algorithm, or more reasonably it would do simple feature matching without having to recognise any of the objects. From the point of view of the programmer (or the Chinese speaker in the other scenario), you can easily make the distinction from actually receiving and understanding the information contained in the language/pixels, or just formulating a response via algorithm without actually unpacking the information. Admittedly, from the point of view of an outside observer, it may very well be impossible to tell the difference with a good enough response without decoding algorithm, which was the point of the chinese room argument.
ok, I see the difference, but that's just a matter of "type of algorithm" we have in a our brain right ? our brain need to understand the sentence in order to respond to it, but we could very well do exactly the same thing with a computer. (it will need a lot more algorithm than just "responding"). "understanding" is simply something very abstract.
Why does this difference matter ?
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On July 03 2013 01:16 NukeD wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2013 21:54 mcc wrote:On July 02 2013 20:36 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 19:21 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 19:19 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 17:11 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 16:33 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 02:36 sc2superfan101 wrote:
[quote]
Religion could be delusion... sure. So what? There is no evidence to say that it is and some evidence to say that it isn't (though let's not get into that discussion).
The whole point of determinism is that nothing whatsoever can be "achieved" about triggers or anything at all. What will occur will occur regardless of any non-existent "action" being taken by "actors" that aren't there. Efforts to avoid/embrace a specific turn of events are themselves predetermined, as is their eventual (and inevitable) efficacy. The face a coin will land on is determined at the moment you flip it, I think anyone can agree on that. Does it make it useless to flip a coin when you want to decide something ? Does it make it less random ? no. It doesn't change anything at all. This can be applied with your entire life or the universe, but it still doesn't change anything. "Determinism" is a kind of information that have no concrete effect. Of course it makes it less random, it isn't random at all. Just because you are incapable to predict if the coin will land heads or tails doesn't mean it's random. If it's determined how the coin will land when you flip it (because of the initial state of the coin, the hand, the force used, the current atmosphere etc), it's not random, there's a pattern to it. You can pretend that it is random, and use the illusion of randomness to make decisions for you, but it's still not random. It doesn't have to have a concrete effect, it's a philosophical concept. Either everything was decided more or less at the moment of big bang, or it wasn't. Either it's predetermined what I will do tommorrow at 3PM, or it isn't. We can't prove it and it's going to happen regardless, so it doesn't have any concrete effect. Then again, most philosophical questions do not. Random is a weird concept that doesn't mean much. I was using it in the sense of pseudo-randomness. Anyway, I was responding to people saying stuff like "Determinism make your life meaningless etc..". I was simply noting that it doesn't matter if you think flipping a coin is determined or not, it is still useful to flip a coin and it shouldn't affect your life whatsoever (ie: you're not losing any "meaning" of your life). The meaning of life is a philosophical question, whether you have a meaningful life or not is subjective and has no concrete effect. Yet it affects people a lot. My point is : You can believe in determinism and still find a meaning of life. Sure, or you can not. You can be a person who just finds it all meaningless if everything is predetermined. Saying "Flipping a coin is just as random" to a person who is of the philosophy that free will is important is just meaningless. Personally, I agree with you. I'm a determinist and I don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of people disagree. How can you be a determinist with all that quantum physics jazz going on. Not saying the world isnt deterministic, but if your main argument is science and then u have quantum physics in which one of the major concepts is "randomness", than it would make me at least raise an eyebrow. And determinism is an awfully depressing view at life if you think about it. I guess it was a rather legitimate way to see life up until quantum physics arrived, but now there is nothing appealing in it for me. You are assuming quantum phenomena play any role in how brain functions. Of course they play role in our cells and so on, but I meant that they "bubble up" to higher levels of function, that they are not "filtered" out on the lower levels. And nothing actually points to the fact that they play any significant role in that area. The same way as they do not play any significant role in me throwing a rock at something. So while quantum physics introduced non-determinism in the world at large, it does not necessarily change the deterministic nature of many systems. Plus randomness is no way less depressing view of life, isn't it ? How random dice rolls improve the view of life. They give absolutely no additional freedom to your life. It is actually the opposite, in deterministic view you, as in all your experience and character, are at least really the source of all the decisions and actions, although deterministic. In "quantum" random view many of your actions and decisions are just dice rolls. How is it more optimistic ? Kinda what Rassy said: Show nested quote +On July 02 2013 22:00 Rassy wrote:
Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way. Double slit experiment suggests that spectator is the one affecting the randomness so thats what I was going at.
It really doesn't. The double slit experiment just demonstrates that randomness from quantum effects exist, it neither gives the spectator control over how random the event is, nor lets the observer make any possibility more likely.
If anything our current understanding of quantum physics essentially precludes both absolute determinism AND free will.
That is to say, the uncertainty principle suggests that you cannot perfectly predict the exact outcome of every interaction (eg no absolute determinism). But since we can't actually effect HOW quantum effects are random, there is no 'will' part of the free will, as we have no mechanism of nudging chance (in the strictly quantum sense) in the direction we want.
So essentially we've moved from being beholden to a deterministic model of the universe, to being beholden to a universe that is uncertain, but with randomness we have no control over.
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On July 03 2013 01:16 NukeD wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2013 21:54 mcc wrote:On July 02 2013 20:36 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 19:21 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 19:19 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 17:11 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 16:33 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 02:36 sc2superfan101 wrote:
[quote]
Religion could be delusion... sure. So what? There is no evidence to say that it is and some evidence to say that it isn't (though let's not get into that discussion).
The whole point of determinism is that nothing whatsoever can be "achieved" about triggers or anything at all. What will occur will occur regardless of any non-existent "action" being taken by "actors" that aren't there. Efforts to avoid/embrace a specific turn of events are themselves predetermined, as is their eventual (and inevitable) efficacy. The face a coin will land on is determined at the moment you flip it, I think anyone can agree on that. Does it make it useless to flip a coin when you want to decide something ? Does it make it less random ? no. It doesn't change anything at all. This can be applied with your entire life or the universe, but it still doesn't change anything. "Determinism" is a kind of information that have no concrete effect. Of course it makes it less random, it isn't random at all. Just because you are incapable to predict if the coin will land heads or tails doesn't mean it's random. If it's determined how the coin will land when you flip it (because of the initial state of the coin, the hand, the force used, the current atmosphere etc), it's not random, there's a pattern to it. You can pretend that it is random, and use the illusion of randomness to make decisions for you, but it's still not random. It doesn't have to have a concrete effect, it's a philosophical concept. Either everything was decided more or less at the moment of big bang, or it wasn't. Either it's predetermined what I will do tommorrow at 3PM, or it isn't. We can't prove it and it's going to happen regardless, so it doesn't have any concrete effect. Then again, most philosophical questions do not. Random is a weird concept that doesn't mean much. I was using it in the sense of pseudo-randomness. Anyway, I was responding to people saying stuff like "Determinism make your life meaningless etc..". I was simply noting that it doesn't matter if you think flipping a coin is determined or not, it is still useful to flip a coin and it shouldn't affect your life whatsoever (ie: you're not losing any "meaning" of your life). The meaning of life is a philosophical question, whether you have a meaningful life or not is subjective and has no concrete effect. Yet it affects people a lot. My point is : You can believe in determinism and still find a meaning of life. Sure, or you can not. You can be a person who just finds it all meaningless if everything is predetermined. Saying "Flipping a coin is just as random" to a person who is of the philosophy that free will is important is just meaningless. Personally, I agree with you. I'm a determinist and I don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of people disagree. How can you be a determinist with all that quantum physics jazz going on. Not saying the world isnt deterministic, but if your main argument is science and then u have quantum physics in which one of the major concepts is "randomness", than it would make me at least raise an eyebrow. And determinism is an awfully depressing view at life if you think about it. I guess it was a rather legitimate way to see life up until quantum physics arrived, but now there is nothing appealing in it for me. You are assuming quantum phenomena play any role in how brain functions. Of course they play role in our cells and so on, but I meant that they "bubble up" to higher levels of function, that they are not "filtered" out on the lower levels. And nothing actually points to the fact that they play any significant role in that area. The same way as they do not play any significant role in me throwing a rock at something. So while quantum physics introduced non-determinism in the world at large, it does not necessarily change the deterministic nature of many systems. Plus randomness is no way less depressing view of life, isn't it ? How random dice rolls improve the view of life. They give absolutely no additional freedom to your life. It is actually the opposite, in deterministic view you, as in all your experience and character, are at least really the source of all the decisions and actions, although deterministic. In "quantum" random view many of your actions and decisions are just dice rolls. How is it more optimistic ? Kinda what Rassy said: Show nested quote +On July 02 2013 22:00 Rassy wrote:
Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way. Double slit experiment suggests that spectator is the one affecting the randomness so thats what I was going at.
That is a misunderstanding of the quantum theory and double slit experiment, it does not suggest anything of the sort.
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Probably. Every aspect of our brain can be affected by different chemicals (drugs), so therefore every aspect of our brain is probably chemical/electrical. And remember, this is about 4 billion years of evolution, so there was a huge amount of time for better brains to be selected for, so it isn't unrealistic to think that our brains could have evolved over those billions of years.
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On July 03 2013 01:09 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 00:54 DertoQq wrote:Pretty sure the brain doesn't work like a computer anyway. Depend on how you define "work like". Unless I missed something, this is useless. "The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese?" Whose to say that our brain doesn't "merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese". There is simply no difference between the two. We can actually easily make the distinction between the two in this case. Since in actual ability to understand Chinese, you decode the information being carried by the language, then assumedly in an intelligent conversation, you formulate an appropriate response, then encode it in Chinese. Whereas in the case of 'simulating understanding Chinese' you would formulate a response without 'decoding' the message being carried by the Chinese, and simply formulate a response via some algorithm, while skipping the part about actually receiving the information being encoded in the Chinese. A computing analogy would be in low level computer vision, in a simple image matching task. A computer could perform an actual object recognition and matching algorithm, or more reasonably it would do simple feature matching without having to recognise any of the objects. From the point of view of the programmer (or the Chinese speaker in the other scenario), you can easily make the distinction from actually receiving and understanding the information contained in the language/pixels, or just formulating a response via algorithm without actually unpacking the information. Admittedly, from the point of view of an outside observer, it may very well be impossible to tell the difference with a good enough response without decoding algorithm, which was the point of the chinese room argument.
The point of that argument was actually to say that no formal algorithm ever can "really understand" Chinese. And I think he failed to argue that very convincingly.
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On July 03 2013 01:16 NukeD wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2013 21:54 mcc wrote:On July 02 2013 20:36 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 19:21 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 19:19 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 17:11 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 16:33 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 02:36 sc2superfan101 wrote:
[quote]
Religion could be delusion... sure. So what? There is no evidence to say that it is and some evidence to say that it isn't (though let's not get into that discussion).
The whole point of determinism is that nothing whatsoever can be "achieved" about triggers or anything at all. What will occur will occur regardless of any non-existent "action" being taken by "actors" that aren't there. Efforts to avoid/embrace a specific turn of events are themselves predetermined, as is their eventual (and inevitable) efficacy. The face a coin will land on is determined at the moment you flip it, I think anyone can agree on that. Does it make it useless to flip a coin when you want to decide something ? Does it make it less random ? no. It doesn't change anything at all. This can be applied with your entire life or the universe, but it still doesn't change anything. "Determinism" is a kind of information that have no concrete effect. Of course it makes it less random, it isn't random at all. Just because you are incapable to predict if the coin will land heads or tails doesn't mean it's random. If it's determined how the coin will land when you flip it (because of the initial state of the coin, the hand, the force used, the current atmosphere etc), it's not random, there's a pattern to it. You can pretend that it is random, and use the illusion of randomness to make decisions for you, but it's still not random. It doesn't have to have a concrete effect, it's a philosophical concept. Either everything was decided more or less at the moment of big bang, or it wasn't. Either it's predetermined what I will do tommorrow at 3PM, or it isn't. We can't prove it and it's going to happen regardless, so it doesn't have any concrete effect. Then again, most philosophical questions do not. Random is a weird concept that doesn't mean much. I was using it in the sense of pseudo-randomness. Anyway, I was responding to people saying stuff like "Determinism make your life meaningless etc..". I was simply noting that it doesn't matter if you think flipping a coin is determined or not, it is still useful to flip a coin and it shouldn't affect your life whatsoever (ie: you're not losing any "meaning" of your life). The meaning of life is a philosophical question, whether you have a meaningful life or not is subjective and has no concrete effect. Yet it affects people a lot. My point is : You can believe in determinism and still find a meaning of life. Sure, or you can not. You can be a person who just finds it all meaningless if everything is predetermined. Saying "Flipping a coin is just as random" to a person who is of the philosophy that free will is important is just meaningless. Personally, I agree with you. I'm a determinist and I don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of people disagree. How can you be a determinist with all that quantum physics jazz going on. Not saying the world isnt deterministic, but if your main argument is science and then u have quantum physics in which one of the major concepts is "randomness", than it would make me at least raise an eyebrow. And determinism is an awfully depressing view at life if you think about it. I guess it was a rather legitimate way to see life up until quantum physics arrived, but now there is nothing appealing in it for me. You are assuming quantum phenomena play any role in how brain functions. Of course they play role in our cells and so on, but I meant that they "bubble up" to higher levels of function, that they are not "filtered" out on the lower levels. And nothing actually points to the fact that they play any significant role in that area. The same way as they do not play any significant role in me throwing a rock at something. So while quantum physics introduced non-determinism in the world at large, it does not necessarily change the deterministic nature of many systems. Plus randomness is no way less depressing view of life, isn't it ? How random dice rolls improve the view of life. They give absolutely no additional freedom to your life. It is actually the opposite, in deterministic view you, as in all your experience and character, are at least really the source of all the decisions and actions, although deterministic. In "quantum" random view many of your actions and decisions are just dice rolls. How is it more optimistic ? Kinda what Rassy said: Show nested quote +On July 02 2013 22:00 Rassy wrote:
Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way. Double slit experiment suggests that spectator is the one affecting the randomness so thats what I was going at.
Actually it does not. Decoherence suggests that the appearance of a wave function collapse is simply due to the exchange of quantum information with the environment of the quantum system. No conscious observer required. Furthermore Rassy's example rather highlights that is is the fact that you have an active part in the decision process that gives you freedom irrespective of whether the rest of the outcome is decided by pure chance or fully determined by additional external factors. Determinism vs. indeterminism is a red herring in these discussions.
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Are there any experiments which try to influence the outcome of quantic state collapse ?
Even though the double slit experiment doesn't suggest it, it doesn't rule it out either, does it ?
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On July 03 2013 01:31 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 01:16 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 21:54 mcc wrote:On July 02 2013 20:36 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 19:21 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 19:19 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 17:11 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 16:33 DertoQq wrote:
[quote]
The face a coin will land on is determined at the moment you flip it, I think anyone can agree on that. Does it make it useless to flip a coin when you want to decide something ? Does it make it less random ? no. It doesn't change anything at all.
This can be applied with your entire life or the universe, but it still doesn't change anything. "Determinism" is a kind of information that have no concrete effect.
Of course it makes it less random, it isn't random at all. Just because you are incapable to predict if the coin will land heads or tails doesn't mean it's random. If it's determined how the coin will land when you flip it (because of the initial state of the coin, the hand, the force used, the current atmosphere etc), it's not random, there's a pattern to it. You can pretend that it is random, and use the illusion of randomness to make decisions for you, but it's still not random. It doesn't have to have a concrete effect, it's a philosophical concept. Either everything was decided more or less at the moment of big bang, or it wasn't. Either it's predetermined what I will do tommorrow at 3PM, or it isn't. We can't prove it and it's going to happen regardless, so it doesn't have any concrete effect. Then again, most philosophical questions do not. Random is a weird concept that doesn't mean much. I was using it in the sense of pseudo-randomness. Anyway, I was responding to people saying stuff like "Determinism make your life meaningless etc..". I was simply noting that it doesn't matter if you think flipping a coin is determined or not, it is still useful to flip a coin and it shouldn't affect your life whatsoever (ie: you're not losing any "meaning" of your life). The meaning of life is a philosophical question, whether you have a meaningful life or not is subjective and has no concrete effect. Yet it affects people a lot. My point is : You can believe in determinism and still find a meaning of life. Sure, or you can not. You can be a person who just finds it all meaningless if everything is predetermined. Saying "Flipping a coin is just as random" to a person who is of the philosophy that free will is important is just meaningless. Personally, I agree with you. I'm a determinist and I don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of people disagree. How can you be a determinist with all that quantum physics jazz going on. Not saying the world isnt deterministic, but if your main argument is science and then u have quantum physics in which one of the major concepts is "randomness", than it would make me at least raise an eyebrow. And determinism is an awfully depressing view at life if you think about it. I guess it was a rather legitimate way to see life up until quantum physics arrived, but now there is nothing appealing in it for me. You are assuming quantum phenomena play any role in how brain functions. Of course they play role in our cells and so on, but I meant that they "bubble up" to higher levels of function, that they are not "filtered" out on the lower levels. And nothing actually points to the fact that they play any significant role in that area. The same way as they do not play any significant role in me throwing a rock at something. So while quantum physics introduced non-determinism in the world at large, it does not necessarily change the deterministic nature of many systems. Plus randomness is no way less depressing view of life, isn't it ? How random dice rolls improve the view of life. They give absolutely no additional freedom to your life. It is actually the opposite, in deterministic view you, as in all your experience and character, are at least really the source of all the decisions and actions, although deterministic. In "quantum" random view many of your actions and decisions are just dice rolls. How is it more optimistic ? Kinda what Rassy said: On July 02 2013 22:00 Rassy wrote:
Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way. Double slit experiment suggests that spectator is the one affecting the randomness so thats what I was going at. That is a misunderstanding of the quantum theory and double slit experiment, it does not suggest anything of the sort.
Okay ill take that as true than, but does the spectator play ANY role in quantum mechanics?
I mean I know using quantum physics as proof for free will is a stretch to say the least, but on the other hand those books that I read did talk about the spectator a lot and suggested him as "a part of the equasion". Im not crazy.
EDIT:
On July 03 2013 01:41 MiraMax wrote:
Actually it does not. Decoherence suggests that the appearance of a wave function collapse is simply due to the exchange of quantum information with the environment of the quantum system. No conscious observer required. Furthermore Rassy's example rather highlights that is is the fact that you have an active part in the decision process that gives you freedom irrespective of whether the rest of the outcome is decided by pure chance or fully determined by additional external factors. Determinism vs. indeterminism is a red herring in these discussions.
Thanks for clarifying the issue to me. As Ive said before, there is a huge chance im wrong considering my limited knowledge on the subject and apparently im wrong. You learn something new every day.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On July 03 2013 01:24 DertoQq wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 01:09 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On July 03 2013 00:54 DertoQq wrote:Pretty sure the brain doesn't work like a computer anyway. Depend on how you define "work like". Unless I missed something, this is useless. "The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese?" Whose to say that our brain doesn't "merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese". There is simply no difference between the two. We can actually easily make the distinction between the two in this case. Since in actual ability to understand Chinese, you decode the information being carried by the language, then assumedly in an intelligent conversation, you formulate an appropriate response, then encode it in Chinese. Whereas in the case of 'simulating understanding Chinese' you would formulate a response without 'decoding' the message being carried by the Chinese, and simply formulate a response via some algorithm, while skipping the part about actually receiving the information being encoded in the Chinese. A computing analogy would be in low level computer vision, in a simple image matching task. A computer could perform an actual object recognition and matching algorithm, or more reasonably it would do simple feature matching without having to recognise any of the objects. From the point of view of the programmer (or the Chinese speaker in the other scenario), you can easily make the distinction from actually receiving and understanding the information contained in the language/pixels, or just formulating a response via algorithm without actually unpacking the information. Admittedly, from the point of view of an outside observer, it may very well be impossible to tell the difference with a good enough response without decoding algorithm, which was the point of the chinese room argument. ok, I see the difference, but that's just a matter of "type of algorithm" we have in a our brain right ? our brain need to understand the sentence in order to respond to it, but we could very well do exactly the same thing with a computer. (it will need a lot more algorithm than just "responding"). "understanding" is simply something very abstract. Why does this difference matter ?
The difference doesn't really matter, the Chinese Room thought experiment was made by a philosopher with very little technical understanding of computing, AI etc, at a time when machine learning and information theory were not nearly as mature as they are now, it's honestly an outdated thought experiment.
Ultimately, at some level, he is correct, if you dig down deep enough. Then the digital computer is shuffling bits around on semiconductors, and cannot 'understand' language. But the same principle can be applied to our brain, a few neurons firing can't understand a language either.
Ultimately Searle has made a poor comparison between a computer and a mind. A computer is indeed incapable of understanding a language while a mind is. But only because it is such a terrible comparison to make. A computer can't understand Chinese, the same way the brain can't, they are pieces of hardware that move signals around.
Really the comparison should be made between computers and the brain, and the algorithm and the mind. In which case his argument falls apart. While the former two can't 'understand' a language the latter two most certainly can. You can easily tell when a language is understood on an algorithmic level, by the presence of the information contained in the language being decoded, then processed information being re-encoded into that language before being spat out as output, this is the same for the computer and the brain.
All in all, I think he just failed to make the distinction between a computer as hardware and an actual algorithm. Either that or he wasn't technically knowledgeable enough to consider a computer understanding something on an algorithmic level rather than a purely hardware level.
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On July 03 2013 01:39 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 01:09 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On July 03 2013 00:54 DertoQq wrote:Pretty sure the brain doesn't work like a computer anyway. Depend on how you define "work like". Unless I missed something, this is useless. "The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese?" Whose to say that our brain doesn't "merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese". There is simply no difference between the two. We can actually easily make the distinction between the two in this case. Since in actual ability to understand Chinese, you decode the information being carried by the language, then assumedly in an intelligent conversation, you formulate an appropriate response, then encode it in Chinese. Whereas in the case of 'simulating understanding Chinese' you would formulate a response without 'decoding' the message being carried by the Chinese, and simply formulate a response via some algorithm, while skipping the part about actually receiving the information being encoded in the Chinese. A computing analogy would be in low level computer vision, in a simple image matching task. A computer could perform an actual object recognition and matching algorithm, or more reasonably it would do simple feature matching without having to recognise any of the objects. From the point of view of the programmer (or the Chinese speaker in the other scenario), you can easily make the distinction from actually receiving and understanding the information contained in the language/pixels, or just formulating a response via algorithm without actually unpacking the information. Admittedly, from the point of view of an outside observer, it may very well be impossible to tell the difference with a good enough response without decoding algorithm, which was the point of the chinese room argument. The point of that argument was actually to say that no formal algorithm ever can "really understand" Chinese. And I think he failed to argue that very convincingly.
EDIT: Never mind, I misread the conversation 
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On July 03 2013 01:52 NukeD wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 01:31 mcc wrote:On July 03 2013 01:16 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 21:54 mcc wrote:On July 02 2013 20:36 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 19:21 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 19:19 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 17:11 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:
[quote]
Of course it makes it less random, it isn't random at all. Just because you are incapable to predict if the coin will land heads or tails doesn't mean it's random. If it's determined how the coin will land when you flip it (because of the initial state of the coin, the hand, the force used, the current atmosphere etc), it's not random, there's a pattern to it. You can pretend that it is random, and use the illusion of randomness to make decisions for you, but it's still not random.
It doesn't have to have a concrete effect, it's a philosophical concept. Either everything was decided more or less at the moment of big bang, or it wasn't. Either it's predetermined what I will do tommorrow at 3PM, or it isn't. We can't prove it and it's going to happen regardless, so it doesn't have any concrete effect. Then again, most philosophical questions do not. Random is a weird concept that doesn't mean much. I was using it in the sense of pseudo-randomness. Anyway, I was responding to people saying stuff like "Determinism make your life meaningless etc..". I was simply noting that it doesn't matter if you think flipping a coin is determined or not, it is still useful to flip a coin and it shouldn't affect your life whatsoever (ie: you're not losing any "meaning" of your life). The meaning of life is a philosophical question, whether you have a meaningful life or not is subjective and has no concrete effect. Yet it affects people a lot. My point is : You can believe in determinism and still find a meaning of life. Sure, or you can not. You can be a person who just finds it all meaningless if everything is predetermined. Saying "Flipping a coin is just as random" to a person who is of the philosophy that free will is important is just meaningless. Personally, I agree with you. I'm a determinist and I don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of people disagree. How can you be a determinist with all that quantum physics jazz going on. Not saying the world isnt deterministic, but if your main argument is science and then u have quantum physics in which one of the major concepts is "randomness", than it would make me at least raise an eyebrow. And determinism is an awfully depressing view at life if you think about it. I guess it was a rather legitimate way to see life up until quantum physics arrived, but now there is nothing appealing in it for me. You are assuming quantum phenomena play any role in how brain functions. Of course they play role in our cells and so on, but I meant that they "bubble up" to higher levels of function, that they are not "filtered" out on the lower levels. And nothing actually points to the fact that they play any significant role in that area. The same way as they do not play any significant role in me throwing a rock at something. So while quantum physics introduced non-determinism in the world at large, it does not necessarily change the deterministic nature of many systems. Plus randomness is no way less depressing view of life, isn't it ? How random dice rolls improve the view of life. They give absolutely no additional freedom to your life. It is actually the opposite, in deterministic view you, as in all your experience and character, are at least really the source of all the decisions and actions, although deterministic. In "quantum" random view many of your actions and decisions are just dice rolls. How is it more optimistic ? Kinda what Rassy said: On July 02 2013 22:00 Rassy wrote:
Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way. Double slit experiment suggests that spectator is the one affecting the randomness so thats what I was going at. That is a misunderstanding of the quantum theory and double slit experiment, it does not suggest anything of the sort. Okay ill take that as true than, but does the spectator play ANY role in quantum mechanics? I mean I know using quantum physics as proof for free will is a stretch to say the least, but on the other hand those books that I read did talk about the spectator a lot and suggested him as "a part of the equasion". Im not crazy.
The spectator, firstly doesn't have to be intelligent. More importantly, in the case of an intelligent spectator, what processes of the mind/situations of chance caused to to decide to observe in the first place, are these not determined by things you have no control over?
A simplified (because it doesn't involve quantum physics ) analogy would be, does a domino in a large domino chain have free will? It does have an active role in what will happen to the domino chain, but does it get to act contrary to what the laws of physics dictate it will?
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On July 03 2013 02:00 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 01:52 NukeD wrote:On July 03 2013 01:31 mcc wrote:On July 03 2013 01:16 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 21:54 mcc wrote:On July 02 2013 20:36 NukeD wrote:On July 02 2013 19:21 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 19:19 DertoQq wrote:On July 02 2013 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On July 02 2013 17:11 DertoQq wrote:
[quote]
Random is a weird concept that doesn't mean much. I was using it in the sense of pseudo-randomness.
Anyway, I was responding to people saying stuff like "Determinism make your life meaningless etc..". I was simply noting that it doesn't matter if you think flipping a coin is determined or not, it is still useful to flip a coin and it shouldn't affect your life whatsoever (ie: you're not losing any "meaning" of your life). The meaning of life is a philosophical question, whether you have a meaningful life or not is subjective and has no concrete effect. Yet it affects people a lot. My point is : You can believe in determinism and still find a meaning of life. Sure, or you can not. You can be a person who just finds it all meaningless if everything is predetermined. Saying "Flipping a coin is just as random" to a person who is of the philosophy that free will is important is just meaningless. Personally, I agree with you. I'm a determinist and I don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of people disagree. How can you be a determinist with all that quantum physics jazz going on. Not saying the world isnt deterministic, but if your main argument is science and then u have quantum physics in which one of the major concepts is "randomness", than it would make me at least raise an eyebrow. And determinism is an awfully depressing view at life if you think about it. I guess it was a rather legitimate way to see life up until quantum physics arrived, but now there is nothing appealing in it for me. You are assuming quantum phenomena play any role in how brain functions. Of course they play role in our cells and so on, but I meant that they "bubble up" to higher levels of function, that they are not "filtered" out on the lower levels. And nothing actually points to the fact that they play any significant role in that area. The same way as they do not play any significant role in me throwing a rock at something. So while quantum physics introduced non-determinism in the world at large, it does not necessarily change the deterministic nature of many systems. Plus randomness is no way less depressing view of life, isn't it ? How random dice rolls improve the view of life. They give absolutely no additional freedom to your life. It is actually the opposite, in deterministic view you, as in all your experience and character, are at least really the source of all the decisions and actions, although deterministic. In "quantum" random view many of your actions and decisions are just dice rolls. How is it more optimistic ? Kinda what Rassy said: On July 02 2013 22:00 Rassy wrote:
Well we then like to believe that we can somehow influence these dice rolls,add some weight to one side of the dice. Making some outcomes more likely then others and introducing "free will" along the way. Double slit experiment suggests that spectator is the one affecting the randomness so thats what I was going at. That is a misunderstanding of the quantum theory and double slit experiment, it does not suggest anything of the sort. Okay ill take that as true than, but does the spectator play ANY role in quantum mechanics? I mean I know using quantum physics as proof for free will is a stretch to say the least, but on the other hand those books that I read did talk about the spectator a lot and suggested him as "a part of the equasion". Im not crazy. The spectator, firstly doesn't have to be intelligent. More importantly, in the case of an intelligent spectator, what processes of the mind/situations of chance caused to to decide to observe in the first place, are these not determined by things you have little control over?
Yeah that is the problem when you rationalize a concept of free will using quantum physics. Whos to say that the "choice" I made wasnt also predetermined by thing i cant control? Cant say anything to retort to that argument really.
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