Forsooth! The more resistance to the shoe, the freer the will.
Posted on 02/12/2005 4:24:09 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
According to M-string theory there are seven extra dimensions that we have and don't know what to do with. Perhaps we use them after all. In dimension X we would all be a millimeter away all the time. Speculate away, but we will require laboratory data at some point.
Thank you so much for your excellent insight!
Very Hegelian. When somebody says it is not this and not that and not the other, we will just wait. As far as the physicist is concerned, there is no such thing as mind anyway.
This sounds like the last few pages of C.S. Lewis' Perelandra.
Cheers!
How do you distinquish a man-made crystal from a non-man made one?
You have to know something about the history of crystals that have been found naturally. I can't think of any absolute criterion. Natural gemstones have defects and inclusions that aren't (usually) found in synthetic stones. But some makers of synthetic emeralds have been getting prices higher than natural stones.
But crystals do not require a program to form, except the one I posted the image of. The question is, did it ever form naturally?
Since it's hard to tell that's evidence of design.
Can you give me an example of something not currently known but which is under study, that might produce evidence against design?
Ask the salesman.
At the nice jewelry stores, they'll tell you.
At the really nice jewelry stores, they're all natural.
(grin)
Well, M-string theory is one of many other string-theory conceptions, RightWhale. So i wonder why the respective theorists are running around describing their work as a "theory" in the first place. Wouldn't "hypothesis" be a more apt, more descriptive word?
Don't get me wrong. I don't "rule out string theory in principle." And it seems very clear to me that the theorists are right to propose additional dimensions beyond the 3+1D block in order to account for empirically observable phenomena. But there are also other string theory hypotheses that do not require the compactification of the newly imagined dimensions. Plus I've seen different proposals that stipulate different numbers of dimensions. Eleven seems to be the currently fashionable concept; but maybe you only need some X more than four of 'em.
To me (a non-expert), it looks like the jury's still out on string theory. Though I definitely wish the researchers well, and hope they will come up with the telling insights we need to advance the physical sciences.
Which of course means that I entirely agree with your statement, "Speculate away, but we will require laboratory data at some point."
Thanks for writing, RW!
Let's re-employ Maxwell's little demon. We relocate him on the face of growing crystal and ask him, on the basis of the ongoing assembly of molecules from solution into the crystal form if the process is designed or random. "Random" he replies, being the demon that he is. In fact he insists that neither we nor our crystal growing apparatus exists, since at the crystal face he has no direct sense of us or apparatus -- just of solvent and solvate and the organized solid that grows beneath him. He calls us "just my imagination running overtime!"
Nothing at his level produces evidence against crystal evolution from randomness.
Still ... despairing and impatient we point out the orderliness of the crystal, and the "magical" occurance of solvent and solvate at just the right temparature and pressure and mix. "One of many possible circumstances, all equally possible, and this is no more than the one that happened to happen." he replies.
We study his intransigence, yet its origin is unknown to us. To Maxwell's career-changing demon it is that very stubborness which produces at his level an irrefutable evidence against design.
No no no no no no no!!!!!!!!!!!! js1138!!! State-dependent learning is not at all the sort of thing I intended here. We aren't even up the the problem of learning here yet; we are at the point of trying to elucidate what consciousness, mental activity is, and what responsibility the brain has in this activity. You give it 100% responsibility -- which leaves YOU (and me) neatly out of the process.
What I was referring to is a process that is so intimate, and yet so pervasive, that we tend not to notice it at all.
What I mean is: What is required in order to execute a "mental operation," a thought? What is needed? how do we get it? and from whence do we get it?
These statements probably sound completely intelligible on first hearing. So let me propose a thought experiment (literally!) that might help clarify what I'm driving at.
There is only one requirement: You [editorial "you" here, js1138 -- I'm not trying "to turn up the heat" on you] are to think about your own thinking. That is, you must try to "analyze" your own thought process, to break it down into steps. You might, for instance, ask yourself a question whose answer you do not know, and then see what you do next. Then you might find yourself qualifying, collecting, and assembling potential sources or "evidence" that seem relevant to the solution of the problem. Then you might probably notice that you begin to compare things, one with another. Along the way, you may find you have been executing the entire process, not in a "linear" way, but in a wholistic way -- because you're drawing so many different threads together, qualifying them, relating them, and so forth, so to draw a conclusion.
Alternatively, you could just ask yourself, "What do I want for lunch today?" Just study what happens next, pay really close attention to it.
i think if you were to do this experiment, you might find that you have a valid, actual basis for suspecting that the brain is, in all probability, not the party "responsible" for this process; though it is clear it has a facilitating role to play.
You're overly impressed with the growing of really really big crystals. Most solids are in fact crystalline; it's just the crystals are not as big as your thumb.
Think about ice crystallizing from water. The water cools until it reaches 32 F, and then it stays at 32 F until all the water solidifies. The system itself locks the temperature into the right temperature and pressure. There's no magic involved. Ditto with crystallization from solution. The solution becomes more and more concentrated until it reaches the saturation point; then it stays at that concentration while the crystals grow from solution.
Darn right. Gotta give that Ghost in the Machine its due.
There is only one requirement: You [editorial "you" here, js1138 -- I'm not trying "to turn up the heat" on you] are to think about your own thinking. That is, you must try to "analyze" your own thought process, to break it down into steps.
BB, the simple command 'top' tells a computer running Unix to show a periodically updated list of current processes. When you run top, one of the processes it shows you is 'top'. It reckons for you the time and memory it's using to run itself. If you cared, you could put 'top' in a script that would look at top looking at top looking at top. And I take it you're not going to claim my servers have souls.
Recursive operations aren't that problematic, and they don't prove much. Thinking about yourself thinking just gives you several trips through your own navel; it doesn't reveal anything.
You may not believe this, but I do this very frequently. You may believe it even less when I tell you that I came to a conclusion that may well be the opposite of yours. Often I ask myself, "how did I come to do that in this specific way", or, "how did my train of thought reach this particular point?" More often than not, I come to the conclusion that I could hardly have done otherwise!
Here's a case in point. Last year I was reading Erasmus's discourse on Free Will, and I challenged myself to demonstrate that I truly had Free Will. My demonstration (unwitnessed) was to take off my shoe and put it on my head. I then deconstructed the action: why did I do that?
Well, the action had to be unusual. I could have raised my hand, or whistled a tune, or removed my glasses, but these are things I might have some other, less volitional motivation for doing. The action had to be something dramatic, so that I would remember it. It preferentially would involve some item close at hand (my will is ostensibly free, but it is above all lazy). What items are closer at hand than my clothing? I could have removed my shirt, but that would have been more difficult and less comfortable. (Never mind the pants.) So a shoe was certainly the most obvious candidate. But removing a shoe, while a volitional act, is something I might have done anyway; some odd gesture is required. What unusual, arresting thing can I do with a shoe? Several things, sure, but placing it on my head was easy and immediate.
So, all things considered, my demonstration fell flat. My path to a proof of Free Will was strictly a path of least resistance, obvious in retrospect at every step. Do I have Free Will? I sincerely believe that I do...but in all honesty, at that particular moment, I as sincerely believe that I did not obviously employ it.
One can imagine a more dramatic locus for the shoe, but would that be any more persuasive?
Forsooth! The more resistance to the shoe, the freer the will.
It's magical in the same sense that your legs being exactly long enough for your feet to touch the ground is....
;-)
That proves it! No way that could have happened by accident! There is a designer!
'Sore tooth', spoken with a shoe in your mouth?
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