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Recent content by smog

  1. S

    Non determinism and the macroscopic world

    And in what way, exactly, is a program which computes any given digit of pi in finite time not "complete knowledge of its numerical expansion"? What do you think "complete knowledge" means? Having pi written out on paper? So I can't know a number until I've written it down? I know that my cousin...
  2. S

    Help please. Which is real: order or chaos? Take the snowflake as a case in point...

    Of course it is for a specified event. We're talking about how quantum uncertainty could seep in to influence cognition somehow. I am saying that with your made up figure, such a specific event is catastrophically unlikely to have happened in the past or to ever happen in the history of...
  3. S

    Help please. Which is real: order or chaos? Take the snowflake as a case in point...

    There are 10^27 atoms in the human body. Let's say each of these atoms is emitting a quantum event every Planck time (5.39*10^-44 seconds) and that each of these events can trigger the change that we are talking about with probability 10^-167. Let's also assume that an average human lives 100...
  4. S

    Help please. Which is real: order or chaos? Take the snowflake as a case in point...

    But the small changes cannot be used to "steer" the system, the point of chaotic systems is that the effect of small changes is intractable, so you can hardly use it to your advantage. Also, a chaotic system, despite reacting to small changes, still reacts much more (or, anyway, at least as...
  5. S

    Non determinism and the macroscopic world

    I would say that Wikipedia does a fair job of covering the various arguments for/against each theory and how the proponents of the theory respond to them. The references are useful too. Besides that, I enjoy the articles over at SEP: Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Stanford...
  6. S

    Non determinism and the macroscopic world

    First, there does not seem to be any reason you could not encode the position of such a particle exactly using analog "bits" that can vary continuously between 0 and 1. Second, there is no reason to think that continuous positions actually carry infinite information. For example, the number pi...
  7. S

    Help please. Which is real: order or chaos? Take the snowflake as a case in point...

    There is absolutely nothing about quantum mechanics that is inherently nondeterministic. Quantum mechanics are provedly nonlocal, which as far as I can tell has eventually been twisted to mean something akin to nondeterminism in mainstream interpretations. But the fact is that there exists no...
  8. S

    When in doubt, ask Einstein.

    I can: I ate it (argument from gluttony).
  9. S

    When in doubt, ask Einstein.

    I challenge your ability to define "spiritual energy" meaningfully. At least there are pictures on the internet to help me imagine a flying spaghetti monster. But spiritual energy? What's that?
  10. S

    Free Will

    Why is that such a big deal anyway? That is not necessarily true. You are saying that if X knows Y well enough, then X can control Y's choices. But what if Y knows enough about X, couldn't he control X? The fact is that there's a sort of equilibrium going on there and that neither X nor Y...
  11. S

    Free Will

    Unless we are our genetic make up, in which case we do, at least in part. Any sensible definition of "self" has to include in a way or another some of the factors, such as the brain or genetic makeup, that make up our decisions. If it doesn't, you're working with a "self" that's basically empty...
  12. S

    Free Will

    We're certainly better at making things than we were a hundred years ago. Give us some time :) You lack imagination. The problem is that this is how operating systems work now. Our software, right now, is designed by humans, because computers are a new thing and we're using it to lever...
  13. S

    Free Will

    Well, I can see two other ways, maybe more if I thought harder. The first way is to conflate your choice with God's knowledge, making it so everyone is a part of God. That would lead to a form of pantheism. The second is to realize that knowledge is equivalent to guesswork for one particular...
  14. S

    Free Will

    Well, I think I know my stuff. The way we make intelligent machines is getting closer and closer to the way nature made intelligent organisms, and this means we now have techniques that solve problems without any need for an intelligent programmer. Eventually, there will come a point where...
  15. S

    Free Will

    Actually, it doesn't. Let's say I want to make a robot who can speak in english. One way to do it would be to give my robot a completely random program and ask him to speak to me. If what he says is intelligible english, I keep the program. If not, I erase the program and replace it by a new...
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