2151. Fleabytes

Comment #138882 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 11:15 pm

Otherwise you end up with dualism out of the inconceivability fallacy.

I don't see how that can be. But by now you should know I don't care for much about "-isms", I think your explanation is not convincing and that is all I care about. There are unanswered questions and your way to try to make the questions disappear with songs and dances of "-isms" and big words is just cheating :-)

Your example of lightning clearly shows the inadequacy of your argument. Also, as noted, thermodynamics "is" molecular motion in a sense, but they are not "identical", there is a real mapping problem here between the two levels and it is a important problem.

2152. Fleabytes

Comment #138874 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 11:07 pm

"Yes, but why does charge separation, leader formation and discharge produce lightning" (or respectively "Why is [...] identical to lightning")

Of course they are not identical, you can have charge separation and discharge performed in laboratory which don't produce lightning and these process also produce something else, like certain kind of chemical reactions which are not intrinsically related to lightning but depend on the medium in which the discharge occurs (and these reactions can be produced in other settings using other methods thus is not intrinsically tied to discharge either)

2153. Fleabytes

Comment #138868 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 10:58 pm

I agree with Steve that there is a mapping problem between the physical-chemical level and the level of experience.

IMO it is a cheap way to try to use a trick of word to get rid of the problem by saying mechanism in level A produces B they are therefore "identical".

A very deep problem in non equilibrium statistical physics is the dynamical origin of the second law of thermodynamics. The whole point is to bridge the gap between the molecular motions which is symmetric in time and the monotonic increase of entropy. It wouldn't be a problem at all if physicists just declare molecular motion and thermal dynamics as "identical" just because one produces the other.

2154. God, power and money

Comment #138852 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 10:25 pm

, Catholics pretend not to notice when one of their parlour tricks doesn't work every Sunday: changing wine into blood, except that after the Hocus Pocus bit, it's still wine...but you pretend that it isn't.

Does anyone know whether children under drinking age are allowed to drink communion wine?

2155. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #138819 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 8:03 pm

qster

Consider that all mass is energy, all thought and mind (and spirit) is energy and energy can neither be created or destroyed - what is to say that my energy is not recycled into another being?

Reminds me of a comedy skit I saw when I was a child. This guy was taking his son to visit grand pa's grave. The kid carelessly stepped on a pile of cow dung. The father slapped him and said, "How dare you step on grandpa like that?"

Apparently Buddhism uses the world "reincarnation" in a very loose sense that a kind of interpretation based on conservation of energy is possible.

I have typed something along the line of Black Wolf's post. I wrote that if reincarnation is true some part of your "energy pattern" has to retain its integrity to the next life so that there is something uniquely "you" being passed on,--it doesn't have to be a "soul" but has to bear your unique signature in some way.


But then I found this on wikipedia:

According to the scriptures, the Buddha taught a concept of rebirth that was distinct from that of any known Indian teacher contemporary with him. This concept was consistent with the common notion of a sequence of related lives stretching over a very long time, but was constrained by two core Buddhist concepts: anattā, that there is no irreducible ātman or "self" tying these lives together; and anicca, that all compounded things are subject to dissolution, including all the components of the human person and personality. At the death of one personality, a new one comes into being, much as the flame of a dying candle can serve to light the flame of another.[13][14]

Since according to Buddhism there is no permanent and unchanging self (identify) there can be no transmigration in the strict sense.

However, the Buddha himself is said to have referred to his past-lives. Buddhism teaches that what is reborn is not the person but that one moment gives rise to another and that that momentum continues, even after death. It is a more subtle concept than the usual notion of reincarnation, reflecting the Buddhist concept of personality existing (even within one's lifetime) without a "soul".

So in Buddhism reincarnation is not a journey of the soul because there is no soul in Buddhism. To use Black Wolf's terminology, there is no need for any "hardware" to carry the information, because the information would be gone too,

It sounds reasonable to me. I am not quite sure why the Buddha used the term "reincarnation".Maybe I am missing something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation#Buddhism

2156. Fleabytes

Comment #138719 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 6:13 pm

Sorry Brain, there will be a lot more editing because I can't preview my message anymore. :)

2157. Fleabytes

Comment #138716 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 6:05 pm

Frankus,

I think memes are the cultural counterparts of genes and are postulated to be subjected to a selection process like natural selection, so the model of religion as memes is quite specific. Atran argues that it is wrong because religion is nothing like genes, the "patterns of behaviour" and "patterns of belief" associated with religion are much more fluid and are contagent to other factors in a very intimate way. Memes on the other hand must have a much stronger degree of structural integrity independent from the environment to be the units for selection,

2158. Fleabytes

Comment #138712 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 5:52 pm

Frankus

Dennett describes religion as a meme that has benefits for itself but not necessarily the host.

Just to get in a different view. Scott Atran thinks that this is nonsense. Religion is not a stable entity that get selected like genes, it get interpreted and reinterpreted as it is transmitted. According to Atran religion is often just a vehicle that provides a set of symbols and language rather than anything with a fixed content, hence it is not a meme.

I would trust Atran a lot more than Dannett because Atran is an anthropologist who studies real religions as practiced by believers and he has quantitative data to back him up.

You can google up his paper if you are interested.It is free for download.

2159. Fleabytes

Comment #138702 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 5:45 pm

Brain

Bonzai. I don't think any healthy human can be an uber-rationalist. Sometimes the best adaptive strategy is to be irrational

I agree.

Nietzsche said we have arts so that we don't die of the truth. :)

2160. Fleabytes

Comment #138689 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 5:34 pm

Frankus

So scientists need to have flights of fancy; to look at the world from odd angles. The ideas they come up with need to 'fit' however. Experimental results need to confirm the hypothesis or what you have is just an interesting idea.

I think that religion or the concept of god is an interesting idea that just doesn't 'fit'.

No disagreement here. I did say that in science original flights of fancy have to be tested against data and be worked out carefully,

I was only trying to provide another answer to the question why some outstanding scientists would believe in some weird things, My point was that very often original scientists are not the umber rationalists that they may be perceived to be by the public because of the way that science is presented.I tried to point out that non rational factors figure prominently in real science. Once we realized that the apparent paradox of scientists believing in strange things becomes less of a paradox.

2161. Fleabytes

Comment #138664 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 5:03 pm

Well, if not dogmatic, then dishonest. Anybody who gets up at mass (or whatever their creed calls it) on a Sunday and says the Nicene creed, which is a statement of dogma either does believe it, or is telling porkies.

It is a ritual. People participate in rituals for various reasons and knowing or agreeing with the words may not even be why they are there, It is like singing Christmas carols for some people, I know because I went to a Catholic school for a few years.

Some of my Jewish friends also tell me that they go to synagogues for Hebrew service even though they don't know any Hebrew, they are vaguely religious. Going to the synagogues and listening to sermon and old prayers is a ritual for them even though they don't know the language.

Rituals play a role in many communities and cultures but they are rarely interpreted literally by participants.

2162. Fleabytes

Comment #138655 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 4:53 pm

Brian

And many who were religious people are now atheists who aren't dogmatic anymore.

Not all religious people are dogmatic, having a vague belief in some God and believing in a set of fixed dogma are two separate issues. I also want to point out that most believers other than fundamentalists don't have consistent belief systems. Religion and God are probably just a visualizing device for them to articulate some deeply felt emotions, but the beliefs are vague and "diffuse" so to speak. Mr, Robertson here doesn't represent most religious people I know, understandably because he is making a living out of the bible so he has to be a lot more dogmatic to give the air that he knows what he is talking about.

Secondly, atheists can certainly be dogmatic without God. Our friend Scooternyc is a good example.

2163. Fleabytes

Comment #138644 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 4:38 pm

Robertson,

If you have to butcher big bang or the bible to make your point you are even more of an idiot than I think.

You know what, it was a priest who discovered the implication for the big bang from Einstein's equations (he was also a distinguished physicist). When the Pope tried to get some PR value out of it, like you are doing 80 years later now. He wrote to the Pope and basically told him to have some honesty and stop embarrassing himself and the Church, though more tactfully for sure.

2164. Fleabytes

Comment #138633 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 4:22 pm

Paula

I'm not at all sure I agree with that. There are far more constructive ways of dealing with problems and difficulties. It seems to me that both religion and pills (other than in cases of medical depression) simply mask the problem rather than actually deal with it.

Such as? Therapy works for some people but it is expensive and religion works for some. Pills work for some people but may have side effects, if you are lucky to be on a drug plan you don't have to pay for it,

I don't buy the assumption that religious belief is necessarily "destructive" just because it is false. Not all religious people are fundamentalists or creationists, not all religious people seek to impose their beliefs on others.

Some people may think abstract "truth" is more important than being well adjusted and happy, but many people don't think that way.

Let's say my neighbour is an ugly toad, but for some reasons he is under the delusion that he is a handsome prince and that delusional belief gives him the confidence to go out and meet people and have a social life. Should I, being committed to "truth", drag him to the mirror and tell him what an enormously ugly person he is so that he would end up being a recluse with his blinds drawn? I don't see what that would accomplish, really.

I am reminded of one of Hemingway's short story,this guy was talking to some Mexican Marxists, afterwards he thought to himself, "religion is opium for the masses, music is opium for the masses, sport is opium for the masses, as is sex.. as is the radio...Well what do you guys want to do with the masses, operating on them without anesthetics?"

2165. Fleabytes

Comment #138616 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 3:59 pm

But do you think that taking pills is the only alternative?

Probably not the only one, but the most common one.,

2166. Fleabytes

Comment #138611 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 3:54 pm

that it's a whole lot easier than actually facing up to them and doing something positive about them.

Well if someone is lonely and find friends in a church he is doing something positive. I don't know what you can recommend for people who find that they are anxious but believing helps. Do you think taking pills is a better route to address that?

I have no problem with people who use religion as a therapy, as long as it doesn't impair them in other ways.

2167. Bulldozers tear down giant religious teapot

Comment #138599 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 3:42 pm

Not just equally valid, but equally foolish, wrong, contradictory and divisive as well. What next?

Surly not equally divisive, I won't hold my breath for Muslims to say that all religions are equally valid like these teapotists do.

2168. Bulldozers tear down giant religious teapot

Comment #138591 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 3:30 pm

Dare say some are worse than others. Saudis are particularly virulent, even to the extent of destroying anything to do with Mohammed in case it becomes a shrine

I know that, The Wahabis built a parking lot on Mohammad's grave and they had tried to blow it up before.I always wonder where are the angry Muslim mobs around the world who should be shouting death to Saudi Arabia.

2169. Bulldozers tear down giant religious teapot

Comment #138590 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 3:25 pm

While the teapot cult is stupid it seems pretty harmless, The followers don't have a problem with other religions and the fun looking, amusement park like constructs might actually be great tourist attractions.

But no, Islam has to crush everything which it deems heretic. This got to demonstrate the fallacy that all religions are equally bad because they are equally false. Some are way worse than others.

2170. Fleabytes

Comment #138584 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 2:59 pm

I have another theory why some brilliant scientists believe in God (or other weired things, Newton was a weirdo and asshole besides being a theist).

Contrary to popular impression, science is not just about carefully checking hypotheses, carrying out observations and applying logic.

In practice it is an art in many ways. So so science may be just consisting of checking fact and proceeding logically, but not the truly brilliant science. It is a combination of taste, insights, and seeing things from odd angles which other people would not have thought of. It takes certain eccentric personality to enable the great scientists to formulate novel ideas and bold hypotheses. Of course they have to be followed by the usual experimental tests and logical scrutiny etc, but what separates a great scientist from her average colleague are those flashes of insights. As Pauli would say, a theory that is not even wrong is not interesting for cutting edge physics.

So in many ways the great scientists may share the temperament of the great artists, brilliant in their works but crazy in other ways,

2171. Fleabytes

Comment #138563 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 2:16 pm

And Max D,

You just provided me of an example of someone who lacks imagination and severely homour-challenged.

EDIT: Most problems in pure science are "frivolous" for the practical minded.

2172. Fleabytes

Comment #138557 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 2:07 pm

Quine

Next you have to ask if your creator deity(s) survived the event?

Indeed. In one version of Chinese creation myth God (Pen Gu) bursted out of a primal cosmic egg, spreaded out the heavens and then died of exhaustion,--an overdose of entropy. So the Chinese incorporated "first cause", the big bang and the second law of thermodynamics (and "God is dead" philosophy) in one genius stroke,-- Creationists and Quran "scientists" move aside.

But most beautifully, God is not around to give order and demand worship once his job is done.

2173. Fleabytes

Comment #138540 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 1:48 pm

Steve

I don't get it for the constants. The assumption of the existence of a mind (particularly with sufficient laboratory equipment to tweak the physical constants(*)) will be far harder to justify than the constants being what they are by chance, surely.

Just thought of a book I would like to recommend to you if you haven't read it already,

http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521848411

2174. Fleabytes

Comment #138535 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 1:35 pm

Max D

I think it is one that science will be quite capable of answering.

It may and may not. The intellectually honest answer is we don't know. Otherwise it is just a statement of faith.

At this stage we don't even know how to formulate the question in a scientific way, let alone answering it The clues we gather from on going investigation may help to create the right definitions and ask the right set of questions, but answers are a lot harder to come by.

People who seek that kind of answers for personal reasons want them NOW. Science "may" have an answer 100 years from now is not a very assuring to them.

Besides, it is one thing to have an answer, quite another to be emotionally at ease with it, There are things that you know there is a rational explanation, but still feel not quite right. You know it in your head but don't feel it in the guts so to speak. I think that explains the
enduring appeal of religion.

2175. Fleabytes

Comment #138518 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 1:17 pm

I am afraid I have to disagree. I asked that question (and the others that Bonzai mentioned) as a child.

Of course I did too, and still do sometimes.

2176. Fleabytes

Comment #138514 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Steve,

The use of the word "mechanics" here is revealing - Newton saw the heavens as a mechanism, and saw design.

Well Newton might have seen a gigantic design but Laplace also called his book "celestial mechanics" so I don't quite get the point (For those who don't know, Napolean asked Laplace why he never mentioned God in his book, Laplace famously replied, "Your majesty, I have no need for that hypothesis")

Seeing the universe as "designed" doesn't logically necessitate an interventionist God by the way, unless one admits that the universe is a pretty crappy design which requires tuning up from time to time.

Again, I would have hoped that after the shock of the discovery of evolution - that imperfectly replicating systems can design themselves - that we would have learn the two lessons:

Well evolution does not explain how life got started in the first place, it doesn't explain fine tuning (which you are more inclined to see as a problem than many here do) and so on. I am not sure if Miller et al use God as a way to address the emergence of complexity,--the kind of questions that standard evolutionary theory answers readily. There are other reasons why people may find a gap to insert their Gods.

2177. Fleabytes

Comment #138503 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Could you write out these profound big questions?

Why do you find yourself here rather than there, now rather than some time else? Why is you not me, or vice versa? Why do I have a sense of self? "Who" am "I"?The kind of questions children ask before they are beaten out of us by education. I think they are vague, usually hard to formulate, seem to have some cosmic significance and have emotional appeals.

2178. Fleabytes

Comment #138499 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 12:54 pm

Can anyone tell me why posts appear and disappear as I refresh the screen? It is a real pain that I cannot preview my post under the new system.

2179. Fleabytes

Comment #138494 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 12:44 pm

Ah, but my usual argument when people mention Newton is that he lived before the publication of The Origin of Species!

Yeah, but his reason had nothing to do with biology, but celestial mechanics, which he was the master of. Darwin could have never answered Newton's question (Laplace did) I am saying there is a way to smuggle in God whenever there are unanswered questions.

On the other hand, I don't see anything that compels one to believe in God even before Darwin Hume didn't. The Chinese poet Qu Yuan asked Hume's question in a long poem called "interrogating heaven" back around 300BC, the relevant verse asked if the Goddess created us, who created the Goddess.

2180. Fleabytes

Comment #138484 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 12:33 pm

Steve

I would have thought that inventionist supernatural entities are going to be problem for a scientist. A scientist says "what I can see and test, and no more", and I would have thought that a good scientist lives with their work in a way that would make it rather odd to allow the supernatural in in this way. I very strange (but in a way, comfortingly human) that they believe in a Christian God.

Well Newton not only invoked God as "the first cause" He believed in an interventionist God who nudged the planets from time to time to keep them in orbits because he couldn't work out the math that he himself invented. This was from Mr.Clockwork universe himself.

I don't know what Miller and Collin's Christian God are like, but a "Christian God" can be anything between Fred Phelps' God and John Spong's--which is more of a motivational prop. I think Miller had written a book trying to argue that his religion is compatible with evolution. Does anyone read it (obviously I haven't) Maybe that will give some hints to what kind of "Christian God" he believes in.

2181. Fleabytes

Comment #138474 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 12:16 pm

I just made some editing.

2182. Fleabytes

Comment #138469 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 11:59 am

Clod

Um....Sentient beings experience stuff and ask questions based on that expierience. I think most people would agree that answers and certainty are desirable but are they a necessity?

But scientists are not people! :-)

Neil deGrasse Tyson made an interesting point. He said it was unremarkable that the majority of elite scientists (note the word "elite", that was his word) are atheists, but what about the 6% who do believe in God? It seems that education and knowledge can combat religion to a degree, but it is not a sure fire way. He asked why that is.

Well I think you can always get to the point where you have questions but science can no longer provide an answer. I am not talking about fairly concrete puzzles like the molecular properties of exotic compounds,most people can live with not knowing that sort of things and remain emotionally detached,

I am talking the "big questions" to which science only has some hints but nothing close to anything reasonably definitive, and perhaps it never will be able to answer to our satisfaction. When evidence and scientific theories have no verdict we are in the anything goes realm.

Most scientists, because of the pragmatic ethos of modern scientific research decide that they can live admitting their ignorance, while the minority are old fashion in that they need something more reassuring. Now it is important to note that there is a difference in not believing in God and believing there is no "God",--whatever it means. Believing there is no God is a belief.

I attribute the majority consensus to the pragmatic ethos of science, which is a kind of social factor, rather than science itself. Some people argue that since Darwin there is no good reason to believe in God, I admit that I can't really see the logical connection. Evolution answers some questions but science as a whole always has gaps. Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins are probably not inferior to Richard Dawkins as biologists and they know a hell lot more about evolution than I do but they find no logical necessity that they must reject all God(s). Facts sometimes do admit multiple meta-interpretations, especially when these meta-"theories" are very wooly,

I was reading the other thread where a debate on Buddhism was taking place, I was struck by how some equal opportunity religion basher insisting on seeing Buddhism through the lens of the Abrahamic faiths, They kept coming with Buddhists believed in this or that, while it might not occur to them that some Buddhist sects actually don't believe in beliefs at all, except the belief that all beliefs are false in some sense and that includes "believing" in reason. What it betrays in the critics is the assumption that beliefs are "natural", which is a simplification and you're right, I am probably guilty of it here.

My own opinion is that there are indeed questions that science cannot answer, and probably never can in principle, like how do you know the weather three weeks ahead (it is a theorem that you can't make long term forecast because of chaos, so "science may progress to the point one day.." kind of arguments don't work, or subjective things like personal aesthetics and so on.. I would only say religion and any other systems would not be able to answer these questions either and leave it at that.

I read a fair bit of sciencey stuff at a laymans level but I don't feel any need to believe it in a concrete way because so much speculation is involved and something new is going to turn up next week.

Good for you. But it is also possible that they are not your questions to begin with, so you are not emotionally committed to knowing the answers You know how it is when you go to school, the teachers tell you a whole bunch of answers to questions that you never raised in the first place. It is not like the Socratic approach where inducing you to ask questions is more important than the answers.

Science used to arouse strong passion too.The pupil of Pythagoras who discovered that square root of 2 is an irrational number was reportedly murdered by drowning. Boyer's father wrote to him saying that he suffered massive nervous breakdown and was on the verge of suicide because he couldn't solve the puzzle regarding Euclid's parallel axiom after years of hard work.Ludwig Boltzmann did kill himself. He apparently got into depression because of harsh criticism from the positivists,--oh those nasty philosophers. Well you don't find this kind of serious commitment to science anymore. :)

BTW, cool wet suit. Is that you in the picture?

2183. Fleas on the Horizon: In Defense of God

Comment #138420 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 9:32 am

Does any body know what is Stenger's reputation as a research scientist?

2184. Fleabytes

Comment #138417 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 9:28 am

Max Tegmark is fun. A bit "way out", but he comes up with exciting ideas.

Fun is all that counts at the frontier of cosmology, No body has any certain knowledge,--with the usual caveats for science in case the philosophers want to be pedantic,-- beyond and including the big bang. String theory has not a shred of evidence. No commitment is required for any of these, it is all just toying with ideas,--a fishing expedition as Jesus used to say. So I say, let the speculations begin.

2185. Fleabytes

Comment #138395 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 9:04 am

The problem is people always have to believe, if not religion then it would be something else. People need answers and certainty.

Even atheists take this for granted, you have to believe in something, maybe the speed of light doesn't change, logic is true etc.(come to think of it why must the speed of light be constant? It is just taken as an empirical fact in relativity, One can prove that a limiting speed exists and it is universal without mentioning light, but that would require other assumptions which essentially lead to the formula for adding velocities in relativity)

When I see philosophical "proofs" for God's existence and non existence I have to laugh my ass off.

How can we be so certain either way. The only things I am fairly certain of are that 1. God is not a very well defined concept, a nebulous, really "big" God "outside our space and time" who intelligently designed the universe is not really a meaningful concept because all its descriptions are just hot air and word games. Asserting that something exists but failing to describe its attributes in a meaningful way,--it doesn't have to be precise,-- is not really an existence claim at all IMHO, though some people may disagree. 2, There are plenty of evidence against the existence of Gods endowed with particular deeds and attributes like the Abrahamic God and 3. The sacred text of the Abrahamic faiths tell such stupid stories that they should be rejected just on aesthetic ground, if there is a God it has to have better taste then to send us its words in such trashy novels and poems.

Beyond that I don't know.

Well I don't have any belief if in the absolute sense. I have working assumptions and degrees of certainty about different things, that is it, in the end everything we know can be wrong,

God may exist but not in the way theists think, maybe we are just figments of God's imagination, along with our science and logic. We are all a dream in ITS head,--figuratively speaking as I am sure if there is a God it won't have body parts, this is my belief. When IT wakes up and drinks ITS morning expresso we'll all be gone. Then God discovers that it is all alone and kills itself because it can't bear the loneness.

BTW, complexity may be an illusion. The information content of the universe may have never changed and it is close to zero.

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9603008

2186. Church exhumes Padre Pio

Comment #138373 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 8:46 am

This is grotesque. It is not even a Christian thing to put a corpse on display so that people can worship and pray to it (except maybe for the representations of that one special corpse but even that is debatable, most protestants think that is wrong too)

2187. US Treaty with Tripoli

Comment #138371 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 8:42 am

I take the phrase "getting medieval on your ass" to new levels - I do it with footnotes!

Hey, we don't need to hear about your kinky fetishes.

:-)

2188. US Treaty with Tripoli

Comment #138359 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 8:27 am

The fear of guns same as the fear of gays.

Excuse me?! When was the last time someone uses a gay man as a lethal weapon? Now a gay man with a gun would be a different story.

2189. Please Call Earth. We Still Haven't Found You.

Comment #138110 by Bonzai on March 4, 2008 at 12:34 am

What's the difference between dedicating your life searching for Jesus, and spending your life searching for aliens?

Difference is searching for Jesus would be in vain but alien may actually show up and squash us like cockroaches or breed us in farms for meat and anal probing. Be careful of what one wishes for,

2190. Richard Dawkins' US Tour begins this week

Comment #138100 by Bonzai on March 3, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Some of you people sound like a bunch of groupies, get a hold of yourself. It is embarrassing just to watch you.

I am sure you all know Dawkins' arguments so well that you can probably regurgitate them better than he himself. So I am not really sure what you will learn from his talk that you haven't known already.It seems that the fan boys and girls just want to admire their idol up close so that they can chatter for days on how handsome and well spoken he is.

I don't think this kind of mini personality cult is healthy for supposedly rational people.

I am probably going to be blasted for blasphemy.

2191. Darwin's dangerous idea

Comment #138090 by Bonzai on March 3, 2008 at 10:27 pm

If you have ever visited an internet sex chat room you may realize that it is not very difficult to write a short program that would pass the Turing test if the judges are a bunch of horny men.

I went to an AI talk last year and the speaker sheepishly admitted that he had been fooled.

2192. US Treaty with Tripoli

Comment #138019 by Bonzai on March 3, 2008 at 6:40 pm

Goldy

Reach down, you'll find, under the penis, a sack containing two pride and joys, two wee grapes that must be protected, the beans in the pod.... sorry, I'll stop

Also called balzac. Oh shit are you calling me names? Opps, maybe I misspelled something...

2193. US Treaty with Tripoli

Comment #137983 by Bonzai on March 3, 2008 at 5:34 pm

Jay

Was that fruit reference intended

It was. Originally I wrote "oranges and bananas" but then I changed it, thinking that it might be a bit too distracting. :)

2194. US Treaty with Tripoli

Comment #137914 by Bonzai on March 3, 2008 at 3:20 pm

"fag" denotes a choiceless sexual orientation. Pinko Lefty denotes a thoughtless political position. I am sure you can see the difference.

So what if I choose to be a homosexual for some very strange reasons? Does it make it somehow bad?

I know it is a fashionable dogma that sexual orientation is born. I think this is actually very simplistic.

First of all, sexuality is not a binary switch as history and anthropology have demonstrated amply, it spans across a whole spectrum. IMO sexuality as an *identity* is a social fiction stemming from the modern fetish to classify and measure everything in order to appear "scientific". Even though we often have no clue what these labels and numbers truly represent, but hey, they are reassuring. Secondly, there are other possibilities besides born and choice, for example conditioning.

Politically I also think it is a bad move to argue for gay rights by "blaming it on the genes". The true homophobes can still say, "so what if it is born, it is still a genetic disease and you are still a freak!" So no, I don't think "sexuality is born" is a very compelling argument for equality.

No one is forced to defend his preference for oranges over apples by saying that he was born that way. For the same reason no one should have to explain the origin of his or her sexuality. There is nothing wrong with having same sex desires, whatever the reason may be and we need to make this point loud and clear.

Sorry, Al. This is not primarily directed at you. I am just using your quote as an excuse for a tangential rant.

Now back to normal programming.

2195. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137490 by Bonzai on March 3, 2008 at 1:48 am

Mitchell Gilks

Bonzai, that criticism doesn't just work on drug testing, but on all of science. We observe, test, and hypothesis. We don't really know why a lot works, we just know that it does.

You are confusing science with technology.

Selective breeding of crops and animals is a technology, the theory of evolution is science.Farmers knew how to selectively breed crops and livestocks thousands of years before Darwin and Mendel, they learned that through trial and error without knowing why. The science of evolutionary biology tells us why.

Science is not just a catalogue of facts and procedures that 'somehow work'. Science is a way of knowing. To have any explanatory power science has to have a coherent narrative and a conceptual structure into which facts fit logically. This is what theories do.

For thousands of years medicine has been a technology. Through trial and error people found out how to cure many diseases without knowing what caused them in the first place. Today many areas in medicine are still just technology even though the trial and error process is more refined and better controlled. Double blinded experiments may show that a schizophrenic drug actually helps patients with HIV, but this is not qualitatively different from ancient medicine if there is no explanation of why it works even though we do better trial and error now,

As for reductionism, I find the criticism that it is "vulgar" to be plain silly. That is by no means an intellectual objection, and it sounds more like a creationists dislike of evolution because they find the idea of being related to monkeys to be "vulgar".

If you read me carefully I didn't use the word "vulgar" to express my personal aesthetic. I used the word in a very specific sense,-- I didn't mean reductionism is always vulgar.This particular kind of reductionism is vulgar because it betrays a very simplistic understanding of what science is and the kind of questions it answers. This simplistic view ignores the fact that you can ask questions about the same phenomenon at many levels and the scientific answer doesn't always address the question at the right level. People normally don't treat their children as just meat bags carrying their genes, even though at some "lower" level this is the fact, The vulgar reductionists are saying that your children are meat bags carrying your genes and nothing more because that is what science tells us.

What I think you are missing is that it is a two way street, although as you say a reductionists take on something may be techincally true, but then what follows is unnecessary, or even wrong. Do you really think that a reductionist can't think that it is both? Just like the non-reductionist? That musics is soundwaves that resonate within the inner ear, causing certain brain states, and is a beautiful masterpiece of human talent?

I don't believe anyone in real life would actually subscribe to vulgar reductionism consistently,--including the vulgar reductionists. So no, I don't believe that a reductionist cannot see "the big picture", that's exactly why I think their view is untenable.

Just to be clear, I am specifically against inappropriate reductionism which insists science is always the answer even though the question may have nothing to do with science, The typical way a vulgar reductionist argues for this position is to deny that there is any question which would have nothing to do with science and when you give him examples he would say they can be "reduced" to science after all, even though my whole point is that the reduction is inappropriate for those questions.

I am not against reductionism per se. It all depends on what kind of question we want to answer, In some context, it is indeed appropriate to say music is sound wave impressing on the ear drum, in other context this completely misses the point, it depends on what the question is. What I am against is the insistence that music is sound wave hitting the ear drum which generates certain brain patterns and that is the only, most relevant truth because this is what science tells us.

2196. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137289 by Bonzai on March 2, 2008 at 3:48 pm

Have you ever taken a class on behavioral neuroscience or psychopharmacology?

It doesn't matter. It answer the wrong questions in the context I am making my point, It is like saying we know everything about digestion, What does it have to do with the art of cooking?

Also, there is always a big gap between science and technology. You may know a lot in some purely scientific sense, it doesn't have to translate to drugs given to people.

2197. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137273 by Bonzai on March 2, 2008 at 3:33 pm

ungodlystheist

Emotions we know are chemical states - to say that to treat emotions through chemicals is wrong, is to imagine that emotions are seperate too and different from these chemical states.

Two answers.

1) To fuck with the brain without having a very good understanding of all the processes involved is not "scientific". Moods are chemical states all right, but it doesn't mean we know their detail working. Many drugs have horrible side effects and are highly addictive even under the supervisions of doctors.

"Scientific drug testing" which is much hyped on this site, answers questions like "Does drug A have effect B?" using statistical methods (double blinded experiments etc). But it doesn't answer "How does A cause B?" or more importantly "Why is B the desirable outcome for someone afflicted with C?"

In the absence of a good theory of how these "chemical states" are connected and activated in the brain and what they do, the empirical method of drug testing is just systematic trial and error. This is often the case for drugs that are supposed to treat mental conditions. No one knows why they "work", they just "work", I put "work" in quotations because it just means producing the clinically expected effects, which may or may not be helpful in a broader sense.

This brings me to the second answer

2)Certain mental states are brought on by external conditions, To treat these as "imbalances" with chemicals without addressing the conditions that bring them on is just treating the symptoms, even if the "treatments" are successful (and without other side effects)

Science works best when you can isolate a phenomenon and study it, but often life is too complex for that. You may try to come up with clean, testable hypotheses, but you may end up answering a different question, which may not be the "right question".

I am not saying that all drug therapy used for treating mental conditions are bogus, but I sense a superstition for drugs and anything that has a "scientific aura" to it in this site. I think there is some need for balance.

Conciousness is no less consciousness just because it as a physical basis and is a physical phenomanon, just as the prism of light is no less miraculous because it to is physical.

Who says it is not physically based? But just saying that consciousness is physically based is hardly a scientific explanation. Where are the details? The testable models? If you have one the AI people would want to know I am sure.

My point is that lacking a scientific understanding doesn't lead us to deny our consciousness because we experience it. Experience is primal, it precedes explanations. So it is not correct to say that science is all that there is to life.

We are physical beings, conciousness has a physical basis and is a physical experience - there is no evidence of csness without the physical form that make it necessary.

No one is denying that. But this is like saying Bach's concertos are just vibrations of air which hit the ear drum and create certain brain wave patterns. True at the physical-physiological level, but it is really off target for the music enthusiasts, It is not wrong, it just answers the wrong question if the purpose is to appreciate the art of musical innovations of Bach and enjoy the music. To say that the scientific answer is the only right one amounts to saying that the art of music has no legitimacy, It is stupid and offensive.

I am sorry to say that it is this kind of vulgar reductionism that gives rationalism and science a bad name. It is a very poor caricature of the scientific spirit, which is actually much more circumspective and modest.

2198. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137246 by Bonzai on March 2, 2008 at 2:57 pm

Is Buddhism a "belief"? Why do you all assume that a thought system must be meant to provide answers? Socrates just asked questions.

2199. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137138 by Bonzai on March 2, 2008 at 12:09 pm

AtheistJon,

Name one item in life that is not touchable by scientific ideas?

You can know everything about sport physiology and still be lousy in playing real sport. On the other hand, great athletes rely on experience and instinct and don't need to know anything about physics and physiology to play a good game. Knowing (or knowledge in the third person like science) and being (knowledge in the first person) are two separate issues,

There are other things which we know through experience, but "science" either has not investigated them or hasn't reached the level of maturity to explain them.

We all experience consciousness even though science has yet been able to explain it, maybe it will in the future, but not for now. No one would deny his own consciousness simply because current science doesn't have a good understanding of it,

Most people have inner lives,--for lack of a better word. Their preoccupations are not just scientific riddles like whether the cosmological constant is zero or the latest technological gadgets,

There are other, more mundane questions like knowing oneself, dealing with regret, despair, desires and disappointment, etc and how to find one's place in life... We are sentient beings and cannot divest ourselves from emotion, we do define ourselves through first person experience rather than third person data and statistical averages. We can't divest ourselves from our emotion to become some robots, neither is it desirable.

"Science's" answer--if I can call it that,--to many of these problems is pills, pills and more pills which often just amounts to chemical lobotomy.

It's my entire understanding of the universe. You consider Einstein's General Relativity to be just a soundbite? Or evolutionary biology?

How does that help you in understanding yourself and the people who surround you? Very little in my experience.

EDIT

On a more pedantic point. Because of chaos and nonlinearity even knowing the science behind something may not be of any help in guiding one's action. To say that all you ever need is "science" is very simplistic. As I said, it is just a soundbite.

2200. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137110 by Bonzai on March 2, 2008 at 11:08 am

Science also "actually" encourages people to explore to finding the right path.

Well, not everything in life reduces to "science', for example, first person experience.

Also, you are probably not involve in any real science research so science is just a soundbite to you.

Science is most successful when dealing with phenomena that can be easily isolated and disentangled to study,. There are actually very few things in everyday life that are simple enough that we can formulate as scientifically testable hypotheses. You can see that by looking at the quality of quantitative research papers in social science journals, they only answer very simple questions, many aren't even that interesting. Even if this can be done, the cost to actually carry out the empirical study may be prohibitive. On a day to day level we don't always rely on "science" to guide us around, we use our instinct most of the time.


BTW, I am not a Buddhist. I just like exploring ideas.