Unsatisfactory Scientific Explanations?

[lesliedellow]

both, unless you can convince me only one exists in the universe and all matter is one or the other and all our science is mistaken????

Are such pathetic strawmen all you have?

God is matter?

 

[Justatruthseeker]

God is matter?

What is matter? You'll have your answer if you can figure out your own strawman question.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I noticed you have avoided answering any of the questions, why is this?

 

[lesliedellow]

No, I just know more about plasma physics than any astrophysicist and don't ignore that 99% of the universe is plasma. It's called research

https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/theoretical-astrophysics-plasma-physics

<Staff Edit>

 

[Justatruthseeker]

https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/theoretical-astrophysics-plasma-physics

I am quite sure you know more than all five of those scientists, even though you have never passed a single science exam in your life.

"Research in theoretical astrophysics at Oxford is split between the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, and the Astrophysics sub-department."

But even they understand single particles behave unlike clumps of matter.

"In a magnetised plasma the motions of individual particles are dominated by the magnetic field and it is a huge challenge to infer from their microscopic motions the macroscopic characteristics of the plasma that are analogous to the familiar principles of fluid flow: pressure, viscosity, etc."

But experiments in space have dispensed with the belief that fluid flow, pressure or viscosity has any analog to plasma behavior in space, because they still use formula we know from "new" experiments "to be wrong."

If you understood what caused magnetism we wouldn't even have to debate this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetism

"Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, which acts on other currents and magnetic moments."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field

"A magnetic field is the magnetic effect of electric currents and magnetic materials."

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_moment

"As the torque is measured in newton-meters (N·m) and the magnetic field in teslas (T),"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(unit)

"One tesla is equal to one weber per square metre."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber_(unit)

"A change in flux of one weber per second will induce an electromotive force of one volt (produce an electric potential difference of one volt across two open-circuited terminals)."

So I agree they are ignoring the electro half in the term electromagnetism when they talk of magnetic fields in space. Just as you are.

I don't know more than they do - I just refuse to ignore half the equation as they do.

 

[[serious]]

I can compensate for that delay. When we sing in church I can sing ahead of behind or with the rest of the people. So I do not exactly see the need for a director.

Setting aside the claim of some preternatural musical talent absent in trained musicians, what does this have to do with anyhting? You said conductors were needed because of the amount of time needed for the sound to travel. Now you have completely reversed that statement and are claiming they aren't needed. Make up your mind.

 

[[serious]]

well see, that's the thing.
i get what justa is saying.
the ability to instantly assimilate your field of view for example.
our fastest super computers can't even come close to this.
but yet the brain does, at a mere fraction of the speed and energy.

the ability to blindfold yourself and go into a room and someone tells you to ad lib on the red object.
the blindfold is removed and off you go.
this sort of thing is light years beyond what current technology can do, we aren't even close to accomplishing this.
and that is just one item, never mind audio, balance as you walk, the every day sensations.
all of this from a 3 pound mass operating at a few hundred hertz and about 20 watts.
no, current technology will NEVER achieve this.

Current technology? No. But there is a difference between "we can't do this right now" and "this is fundamentally impossible"

We can, right now, fully simulate the electrical components of some animal's nervous systems, every nerve, every synapse. There is no reason I know of to expect our ability to simulate increasingly complex nervous systems should become impossible. We continue to create smaller, lower power, faster processors. Do we have any reason to assume there will be some point that we will not be able to model a human brain this way?

 

[whois]

And then still ignore that EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER RUNS ON 2 BIT BINARY CODE.

although all digital computers i'm aware of operate on binary, not every computer is digital.
there are 2 basic types of computers, digital and analog.
a good example of an analog computer is the slide rule.

 

[whois]

No, I just know more about plasma physics than any astrophysicist and don't ignore that 99% of the universe is plasma.

you should NEVER say things like this justa.
i GAURENTEE you that you do NOT know more than anyone else on this topic

It's called research - just like they could be doing but are not. Just as you could be doing but are not. Your ignorance about how it behaves is no-ones fault but your own.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1970/alfven-lecture.pdf

"The cosmical plasma physics of today is far less advanced than the thermonuclear research physics. It is to some extent the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulae which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong. The astrophysical correspondence to the thermonuclear crisis has not yet come."

But it is on the doorstep as we speak.

I just know that single particles can not be treated like clumps of matter - nor can their charge be calculated from clumps of matter.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/10apr_moondustinthewind/

""We've had some surprising results," says Abbas "We're finding that individual dust grains do not act the same as larger amounts of moon dust put together. Existing theories based on calculations of the charge of a large amount of moondust don't apply to the moondust at the single particle level."

I'm not surprised at the results - only they are - it is what one would expect if they understood anything about particle physics and electromagnetic theory.

i'm not surprised at the results either.
the very fact that there is gravity proves clumped matter behaves differently than single atoms.
single atoms do not posses the property of gravity.

 

[whois]

Current technology? No. But there is a difference between "we can't do this right now" and "this is fundamentally impossible"

you know, the very same thing was said in regards to abiogenesis.
when stanly-miller performed their famous experiment, some said we would solve the riddle of life within 10 years.
that was in 1953.
here it is, 60 years later, and we STILL do not have a plausible scenario for the emergence of life.
given all the resources, the research, the best minds we can find, we still do not know how it happened and we have failed to duplicate it.
i'm like you, i hate to use the word impossible, but that certainly seems to be the case for abiogenesis.

We can, right now, fully simulate the electrical components of some animal's nervous systems, every nerve, every synapse. There is no reason I know of to expect our ability to simulate increasingly complex nervous systems should become impossible.

this is the very reasoning scientists were using in regards to abiogenesis.

We continue to create smaller, lower power, faster processors. Do we have any reason to assume there will be some point that we will not be able to model a human brain this way?

not without a fundamental breakthrough.
yes, we certainly have been able to cram more and more components into the same area,
but this comes at a price, namely heat.
todays processors cannot operate without a heat sink, some of them are very large and also includes a fan because a heatsink alone isn't enough.

i'm sorry, but it just will not work, the heat load makes it impossible.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

But it only learns what an intelligence tells it.

ANNABELL does not have pre-coded language knowledge; it learns only through communication with a human interlocutor.

It learns as words are input. It then compares new words to the existing words that have been stored after input. You are simply programming it on the fly - thinking it is learning, when it knows nothong but what it has previously been told.

If you told it green meant red - it would become confused over time - and would never figure out by itself why if green is red - red is not green. It only knows what you input into it - and is incapable of learning without that human teaching it.

Like any human child learning a language.

Deaf twins on the other hand have worked out ways to communicate with each other in their own devised language - without the need for instruction.

That's fine - basically they learn together and teach each other. If you want computers that can invent a language from scratch by cooperation, they've been around for a while - see Robots Invent Language. But that is a different class of problem. As I seem to have to repeat every time, Annabell is just an exploratory language learning system. It doesn't create or develop language, nor is it intended to do so.

It only "appears" to be learning" simply a sly trick of pre-programmed code telling it to pay attention to how words are used and with other words.

The whole point of the exercise is that there is no pre-programmed code for words or language. Have you not been listening?

If you tell it Hello at the start it might respond with hello, but will not understand why you said hello or why it should respond with hello, besides being told to do so by pre-programmed code. That it may learn to respond in the correct manner - does not mean it actually understands the meaning of its responses.

And just how does this differ from language acquisition in babies? (I'm not saying that Annabell learns exactly the way babies do, just that the same principles are involved).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... You also make claims that may be possible but again, unfortunately those that are surely impossible.

Such as?

You also seem to believe that coming up with a new computer structure that more closely mimmics the human brain will allow artificial machines to imitate, possibly even at an essential level, and become human in it's ability to think. I have to again strongly disagree with the latter point here.

Where did I say that? I think it's possible that a machine can be constructed that can think and even be conscious in a recognisable way, but it obviously won't be human thought or consciousness any more than a gorilla's.

It seems to either of you that thinking is merely a brain in its activity of neural network function. If so it is here I fundamentally disagree, for to me the term "mind" is shorthand for the thinking... that is the abstracting, reasoning, memorizing and the imaginative powers of a human person. Yet no matter how complex we find the human brain to be, or how closely we can relate/map particular kinds of thoughts to an area of the brain matter, it does not have the power of thought. As I've brought out in other posts the human mind works through the brain to in effect give it's matter the power to express thought. In other words there is a mysterious connection between the spiritual soul here (the immaterial form) and matter that causes this body to transcend its natural powers.

If you can point to a scintilla of evidence in support of your hypothesis, please do so. I know of none, and all the indirect evidence I've seen suggests the activity of the brain alone is the source of the mind and mental functions. There is also no support for your idea in physics; beyond electromagnetism, there are no forces or particles with the appropriate range or strength to significantly affect the brain in the way you suggest, nor is there any any means to support any disembodied or immaterial agency; thermodynamics and the conservation of energy also militate against it.

I'm curious to know what functions this immaterial form supplies that we don't already have evidence for the brain itself providing, and how it is proposed that it can interact with a material brain to influence it's function and yet be undetectable...

Sean Carroll's talk on the implications of the discovery of the Higgs boson covers this subject pretty well. The whole thing is well worth watching, but here we cut to the chase:

while I suggest a substantially different kind of "computer" might more closely imitate the brain, it could never do so substantially...

'Substantially'? what do you mean by that? Where do you draw the line? if we can imitate 'more closely', how close can we get, and what stops us there?

Seems to me whois brings this out with his insistance that computers today are insufficient where it comes to abstraction. I think this is key because this power is one much greater than even that of reasoning.

Computers deal with multiple levels of abstraction all the time, from microcode to high-level languages. If you mean processing abstract concepts, they can do this too - systems like IBM's Watson deal with abstracting the relevant and significant conceptual information from queries and using it to abstract related concepts from a knowledgebase; this is nothing like human cognitive processing, but neural systems like Annabell are related to biological neural processing, both structurally and functionally; and learning a language from scratch essentially involves abstraction.

 

[[serious]]

you know, the very same thing was said in regards to abiogenesis.
when stanly-miller performed their famous experiment, some said we would solve the riddle of life within 10 years.
that was in 1953.
here it is, 60 years later, and we STILL do not have a plausible scenario for the emergence of life.
given all the resources, the research, the best minds we can find, we still do not know how it happened and we have failed to duplicate it.
i'm like you, i hate to use the word impossible, but that certainly seems to be the case for abiogenesis.

this is the very reasoning scientists were using in regards to abiogenesis.

not without a fundamental breakthrough.
yes, we certainly have been able to cram more and more components into the same area,
but this comes at a price, namely heat.
todays processors cannot operate without a heat sink, some of them are very large and also includes a fan because a heatsink alone isn't enough.

i'm sorry, but it just will not work, the heat load makes it impossible.

There are actually a couple proposals for the origins of life, but let me give a very quick rundown of my favorite. Ultimately, we need 4 things:
A source of rna (or DNA or protein, but rna is most likely)
A source of lipid bubbles to contain them
A strand of rna that can self catalyze
A way of getting that into the bubbles

Lipid bubbles and raw rna are easy. They natural for under some conditions. Let's work around a deep sea vent. Bubbles grow by naturally absorbing smaller bubbles and free lipids. They can split into multiple bubbles when large enough due to turbulence. Small bits of rna can get in and out, large bits cannot. Bubbles with trapped rna can pick up lipids to grow faster, and thus split faster. The rna can extend itself randomly, but that isn't very helpful. However, as soon as one of those trapped bits of rna happens to have some weak autocatalytic activity, we now have a code that helps those bubbles reproduce, reproduces itself, and is subject to mutation. Everything needed to get an evolutionary foot in the door.

Any issue with that approach?

 

[whois]

There is also no support for your idea in physics; beyond electromagnetism, there are no forces or particles with the appropriate range or strength to significantly affect the brain in the way you suggest, nor is there any any means to support any disembodied or immaterial agency; thermodynamics and the conservation of energy also militate against it.

i don't think electromagnetism applies.
the "voltage" levels between neurons is chemical, and there is no ferrous metal involved.
-the opinion of a complete dweeb.

 

[whois]

There are actually a couple proposals for the origins of life, but let me give a very quick rundown of my favorite. Ultimately, we need 4 things:
A source of rna (or DNA or protein, but rna is most likely)
A source of lipid bubbles to contain them
A strand of rna that can self catalyze
A way of getting that into the bubbles

Lipid bubbles and raw rna are easy. They natural for under some conditions. Let's work around a deep sea vent. Bubbles grow by naturally absorbing smaller bubbles and free lipids. They can split into multiple bubbles when large enough due to turbulence. Small bits of rna can get in and out, large bits cannot. Bubbles with trapped rna can pick up lipids to grow faster, and thus split faster. The rna can extend itself randomly, but that isn't very helpful. However, as soon as one of those trapped bits of rna happens to have some weak autocatalytic activity, we now have a code that helps those bubbles reproduce, reproduces itself, and is subject to mutation. Everything needed to get an evolutionary foot in the door.

Any issue with that approach?

there has been scads of hypothesis put forth in regards to abiogenesis.
the acid test is getting it to work.
the RNA world is the most famous of these, and showed great promise, but it too failed

 

[[serious]]

there has been scads of hypothesis put forth in regards to abiogenesis.
the acid test is getting it to work.
the RNA world is the most famous of these, and showed great promise, but it too failed

I don't follow. What part wouldn't work? What is the broken link? Surely you aren't saying we would need to observe the formation of novel life in the lab from nonliving sources.

 

[whois]

I don't follow. What part wouldn't work? What is the broken link? Surely you aren't saying we would need to observe the formation of novel life in the lab from nonliving sources.

well yes, that is the acid test.
you cannot say "this will work" then pass that phrase off as evidence.

 

[stevevw]

Such as?
Where did I say that? I think it's possible that a machine can be constructed that can think and even be conscious in a recognisable way, but it obviously won't be human thought or consciousness any more than a gorilla's.
If you can point to a scintilla of evidence in support of your hypothesis, please do so. I know of none, and all the indirect evidence I've seen suggests the activity of the brain alone is the source of the mind and mental functions. There is also no support for your idea in physics; beyond electromagnetism, there are no forces or particles with the appropriate range or strength to significantly affect the brain in the way you suggest, nor is there any any means to support any disembodied or immaterial agency; thermodynamics and the conservation of energy also militate against it.

I'm curious to know what functions this immaterial form supplies that we don't already have evidence for the brain itself providing, and how it is proposed that it can interact with a material brain to influence it's function and yet be undetectable...

All these papers and articles show how our minds can affect things. Scientists are discovering the observer effect through quantum physics. Some say that our reality is the product of our minds. Some tests have verified the observer effect. Other tests are showing that our minds can actually affect machinery or be tuned into each other or into global events as though they are all connected. Some say the universe is immaterial and we have created this with our minds. Other tests have verified the power of prayer. But these all seem to support the idea that our mind has more to it than just an organ with a bunch of neuron connections.

Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness
"It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/experiment-confirms-quantum-theory-weirdness

CONSCIOUSNESS, INFORMATION, AND LIVING SYSTEMS
http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/Dunne2005.pdf
Concept The mental Universe
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436029a.html
“A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual.” – R.C. Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University , “The Mental Universe” ; Nature 436:29,2005)
http://deanradin.com/evidence/Henry2005Nature.pdf
Science Proves the Healing Power of Prayer
http://www.newsmax.com/Health/Headline/prayer-health-faith-medicine/2015/03/31/id/635623/
The Global Consciousness Project

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/story.html

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

...It's one thing to program a computer to handle the task of categorizing say, the animal kingdom. Yet it is entirely another to program it to actually understand such categorization... or why even do it. Consider terms such as "I," "he" and "a"? The human mind can associate these symbols with the real beings they represent and in doing so comprehend why... on the contrary a computer can only memorize the assigned definitions. The computer must always have a human form behind it in order to look human!

This is why systems are being developed (e.g. neuromorphic systems like Annabell) that learn by example and training without being pre-programmed to recognise and manipulate symbols; so that these capabilities develop with training and reinforcement in the same way as they do in biological systems, i.e. they are emergent.

When was the last time you saw an animal laugh? Never. This is because it is not in their nature to do so.

Few animal behaviourists would agree with that - see Do Animals Laugh? You might also be interested in altruism in rats. The more we learn about human and animal behaviour, the more we realise that many of what we thought were unique human attributes are developments and refinements of capabilities that are not uncommon in other creatures; and not just primates or other mammals - Alex the African Grey parrot showed a surprising capacity for abstract reasoning and inference, and even some invertebrates, e.g. molluscs, such as octopuses, whose nervous systems developed quite independently from the vertebrates, show signs of self-awareness and creativity. You might also like to try pitting your human spatial memory against a monkey's in The Monkey Span Test.

...even the most complex forms of living matter that are not human cannot do what humans do so how could a complex, or more complex computer be expected to do so? Arrange it into neural nets and do so a billion billion times more complex than we now have and it still will not be human. It will not think. It could not choose freely as humans do all the time. Artificial machines may imitate these personal characteristics, as animals do to some degree, but they will never take on these human abilities just as animals, plants and inanimate matter never do.

The argument from incredulity needs to be backed by plausible reasoning or evidence, or it just resolves to an argument from ignorance. A machine can never be human, that's ontologically obvious, but there's no rule that says it can't have human-like or human-level qualities (or even supra-human capabilities, as so many machines already have). A more plausible reason for doubt is whether we really want or need machines with human-like qualities such as emotions.

... I finish by saying you guys cheapen what it means to be personal beings when you equate machine "intelligence" to human.
You must tread lightly here otherwise you attack the inherent dignity a person has by falsely elevating machine to life and matter to spirit.

Ah, now we see the real issue - it's an affront to human dignity to believe a machine can do what we do. Yet the history of machines is a repeated story of such affronted dignity; calculators, chess players, Jeopardy, speech recognition, dictation, translation, product design, etc., machines have achieved what was previously claimed to be uniquely human capabilities, and the descendants of those affronted dignities are now using them in their daily lives. Now we're making machines based on the principles of biological information processing, and they're displaying the same kind of characteristics, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the obvious potential.

You also falsely attack me for not giving evidence for my perspective on this subject yet it is you who fail to do so! My proofs are all around us as I've laid out here in cursory so it is simply your blindness to the limitations of the scientific method that keeps you from seeing as the average unscientifically trained person does.

If you can quote where I attack you, I'll apologise or explain what I really meant. I'm well aware of the limitations of the scientific method - but it still remains the most reliable and productive method of knowledge acquisition. Are you really suggesting that someone can somehow see things better if they're an average unscientifically trained person? How so?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

i don't think electromagnetism applies.
the "voltage" levels between neurons is chemical, and there is no ferrous metal involved.
-the opinion of a complete dweeb.

Ferrous metal isn't necessary to electromagnetic phenomena, e.g. light is and electromagnetic wave, and copper conducts electricity. Neural activity has various electromagnetic components; synaptic currents produce electrophoretic and electro-osmotic effects, and the depolarization of ionic charge separation across membranes produces electromagnetic waves - these are what EEG machines detect.

But the real point is that there are no other fields or forces besides electromagnetism that have the range or strength to influence neural activity across the brain in the way required by that hypothesis - and if there were, we'd be able to detect them, either directly, or by their effects on neural activity.