Posted on 05/29/2002 8:32:25 AM PDT by cornelis
Why?
Ironically, the Tertullian quote sums up my criticisms of the creationist mindset!
My guess is that Jim Robinson isn't aware of the damage that one of his trusted moderators is doing. I haven't sent JR any communications about it, and I don't think anyone else has either. Other than pinging him as an additional addressee on some of the posts, which he hasn't the time to digest, how is he supposed to know what's going on? As long as the evolution side behaves like grownups and doesn't go whining to the management, the rogue moderator has a free hand to behave like a child. So until I have evidence that this conduct is truly Jim Robinson's policy, and I doubt that it is, I'll continue to think well of this place.
Could it be these Threads are not deleted because they do debate this on going "current event" argument of Creation vs. Evolution. Oh, and since the gov't schools force the teaching of the THEORY of evolution as fact and creationist want at least, their side presented, leads to a hearty "political" discussion.
Yes. And why is there infinite and sublime order and not chaos?
Science was begun in the Chistian West as an exploration of and an attempt to explain God's material nature. But none of the early explorers other than Darwin would have thought, I would suggest, to go so far as to presume or conclude that materiality explains itself.
And despite "His" immense consistency, where is it written that God must follow our rules, the rules of science? Even science should admit into its realm that for which there is evidence. At the individual level and on rare occasion, for example, people do know the future and no amount of scientific rule-making can overcome such evidence. This is one example among many. Further, quantum mechanics itself points toward immateriality. Science over the past century or so has developed the bad habit of denying or ignoring that which it cannot explain, thus attempting to constrain reality to fit its definitions. By what logic should or would God conform to our man-made rules?
Well, for what it's worth and with a bow from a "redneck intellectual" to the true intellectuals among us.
Well, you've got me smiling. We get a lot of the Authority of the Bible vs. the Authority of Science here and what interests me is what's behind the authorities. To many it seems, it's the authorities that matter. I also find it quite ironic that I spend more time defending Christianity than many Christians and I am in no way orthodox. I love truth, period. The difficult part is knowing truth.
Ah, well, thanks for the levity.
Thanks KC.
It's the Tertullian quote that really gets the goat of most post-Enlightenment, aggressively atheist, hardcore materialists like the type who populate these threads. "Believe because it's impossible"!?! Nothing could strike a more dissonant chord in their consciousness. Having built walls between themselves and mystery, and believing (quite falsely) that everything there is may be discovered by the construction of immense logical chains of thought (while at the same time perversely contending that the instrument of that construction, the human brain, is little more than an ingeniously, but randomly, put together "Lumbering Robot"), they bridle at the suggestion that anything is beyond them, or that the "impossible" has any place in their neat and tidy worldviews.
Thus a Nobel Prize–winner in genetics, Richard Dawkins, tells us what he doesn’t know. We are as persons, he says, only "lumbering robots" whose genes have "created us body and mind." There lies hidden in this direct quote, however, a royal we: Dawkins does not assume himself thus described. Rather he stands at a transcendent point, above both genes and body and mind, in a presumption of containing by his pronouncement an absolute comprehension of the nature of man. Thus he becomes an excellent illustration of what I shall call the provincial mind. Alas, his is an intellectual malady conspicuous among our intelligentsia: the modernist mind presuming intellectual autonomy beyond limit.
Marion Montgomery
No, but I still vividly remember when my usual brand of bathroom tissue changed from 2-ply to 1-ply without any warning, and I bought some of the new stuff thinking I could rely on a familiar brand name. Truly a horrible experience.
One wonders if there is an actual, articulated statement or guidance for thread monitors to follow in making their purging decisions. I mean, beyond the one posted -- no racial slurs, foul language, personal attacks, etc. What else can get you booted these days? Is it on paper somewhere? or are these decisions left up to the sole discretion of the monitors?
If the latter, that would be like Massachusetts' rules on the issuance of gun permits: It is entirely left up to the individual discretion of the local police chief, and he can refuse to issue if he thinks you're an "unsuitable person." And he would be perfectly within his authority to consider you such if you're merely having a bad hair day.
What a world we live in. Thanks for writing, VR. It's always a pleasure. best, bb.
In re your #373, the "selection" to which the article refers and upon which its logic depends is an assumption, a huge one, which is in no way verified.
I don't dispute this.
I know that he has been attacked incessantly by those in the artificial intelligence field, because there it is politically incorrect to assert that computers won't lead to consciousness. So, I'm left with what I do know about Penrose vs. what you tell me you know.
There are a number of very specific problems with his ideas on quantum consciousness and the non-computability of consciousness. Some of the original dialogs regarding this are probably not preserved online due to their age. Two problems in his core assumptions that he has been soundly criticized for:
The idea that he proved the non-computability of consciousness with Godel's theorem is false. First, his "proof" was flawed and you can find rigorous mathematical deconstructions of his proof on the web using Google. Second, implemented universal state machine designs exist that do not have a property that he was assuming for his theory. However, I don't hold this part against him because he wouldn't have known about such things at the time he wrote his book; it was an esoteric "hard problem" of computer science that was recently solved.
Quantum behaviors in the brain cannot be a meaningful factor in consciousness/intelligence. This was first pointed out a long time ago by physicists/engineers familiar with neurophysiology. If you do the calculations, you find out that any quantum mechanical behavior falls below the noise floor of the brain by orders of magnitude; thermal noise and other factors are sufficiently high that coherent information could not be stored in the quantum mechanical substrate. Other points worth making is that quantum computation can do nothing that current silicon can't do; all it does is change the computational complexity of certain classes of problems from exponential to linear and so forth (very important, but not revolutionary). I've seen numerous qualities commonly ascribed to quantum computation that simply aren't true.
Penrose didn't come up with the non-computability idea until after the problems with his quantum consciousness idea had been pointed out to him by others with intellectual clout. The problem with his quantum consciousness idea is that he didn't do his research before writing it. The non-computability argument was later taken apart after he published the book, but he was outside his area of expertise on that count. The problem most AI (and non-AI) folk have with his work in this area is that Penrose really wants to believe in an almost mystical view of consciousness and intelligence, to the extent that he stretches his credibility.
Notably, I have read of many AI people over the years who claim that we just need bigger computing machines, better algorithms and more complex neural networks before consciousness spontaneously arises in machines. I personally think this is hogwash, and note that now that we have those powerful machines, nothing of the sort has happened.
I agree with you on this point; I consider the above to be nothing more than excuses in general principle (the "why" part is lengthier than I want to go into now). There is a lot of weird religion in AI research, but there are also some very sharp people working in it as well. Nonetheless, the cranks probably outnumber the genuine article in that line of research.
One thing to realize is that although the problem of AI has been worked on for half a century, there has been no mathematical foundation for virtually all the work that has been done. In computer science, this essentially means that the research being done had little or no chance of amounting to anything. The first part of the problem is nailing down the definitions; people use terms like "consciousness" without really knowing what they mean. After you nail down the definitions, the second part is tying the definitions into the relevant mathematics. Still, most of the work being done has essentially been a "shotgun" approach to AI, throwing pellets in lots of directions hoping that you hit something.
In the last decade or so, and particularly in the last five years, the mathematics has finally started to catch up with the software design. It turns out that everyone was pretty much looking in the wrong direction, and we can now prove with a great deal of mathematical rigor why all the attempts to date never panned out. As a matter of bad luck or something, the solutions and mathematical definitions of the problem emerged out of an area of mathematics that has been largely ignored by computer science except in very narrow and mundane applications. The first direct overarching mathematics paper to outline the character of the problem (there exists a universal super-algorithm which can provably express all forms of intelligence, ironically in an algorithm space that has not really been explored in CS) was published around 2000 (although I know for a fact that the core mathematical concept was discovered a few years prior to that publication). So after almost half a century of wandering aimlessly, the AI community finally has a specific set of comp.sci problems to solve that will provably generate the results they are looking for. For better or worse, nobody is willing to publish much on algorithm development in this area, since the first real gold rush in AI has just started, though most people aren't aware of it. I come into contact with AI folks a lot, and am deeply involved in very relevant mathematics, and there is a bit of excitement in many circles that the first general AI technology is imminent; from their perspective, having a mathematically rigorous target has taken a great weight off their shoulders. Knowing what I know of the mathematics, I am a lot more optimistic about the outcome than I used to be (and early work in this area is looking far more promising than any past direction according to the people in the trenches).
You can find more information on various aspects on Google, though information on some things is a bit sparse on the web. I am very, very busy and really don't have the time to elucidate more or write a dissertation on the myriad of matters touched upon.
I can substantiate almost everything I post on FR. However, I don't have time to respond to or elucidate everything other people write, particularly if it is a point of fact that is self-evident with a little research (like in mathematics). As I have repeatedly pointed out to twits with reading comprehension difficulties, I do not have an opinion in the cr/evo debates (we can't prove either in a meaningful way). I hang around these threads to slice and dice the gross abuse and misuse of mathematic and scientific fields with which I am intimately familiar. Consider it a public service.
IMHO, yendu bwam, your posts have been wonderfully and skillfully argued. Although Mr. Tortoise doesn't seem to realize it, you anticipated all of his objections before he even posted to you.
Yendu bwam IS a decent opponent, but that has little to do with the validity of the objections. My objections were clearly NOT anticipated, or I would not have had to elucidate on things I consider obvious to someone familiar with the topic.
I believe that a capitalist society will evolve thru violent revolution into a dictatorship of the proletariat, in which the State will eventually wither away of its own accord, leaving us with a workers' paradise. "Impossible", you say? Well, that just seals it for me!
I believe I can float in the air thru sheer force of will. I know this because I've dreamt it. "Impossible", you say? Well, that just proves it for me!
I believe I can move objects with my mind. I know this because I've dreamt it to. "Impossible", you say? "Thank you for proving me right", I say.
I believe that I can construct a highrise apartment building that is held up soley by the faith of its tenants, and it will collapse only if the tenants stop believing in it. "Impossible", you say? Well, I say "if it sounds to good to be true, you just don't have enough faith!"
"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God."
"Snakes and monkeys are subjected to the demon more than other animals. Satan lives in them and possesses them. He uses them to deceive men and to injure them."
"Some [demons] are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightning and thunder, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds."
"This fool [Copernicus] wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."
"To be a Christian, you must pluck out the eye of reason."
-- Martin Luther
Methinks Tertullian would approve of Martin Luther. Is that a deficiency in my worldview or in Tertullian's?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.