@Louanne Learning Love that article and the whole concept. I’m trying to get hold of The Killing Star book. Watch the link below and stick with it or jump to the 9mins mark. The conversation between the humans and the alien discussing his machines was electric. Be careful what you wish for type of thing... The Devastating Destruction of the Human Race | The Killing Star - YouTube
I watched the first 9 or so minutes. Very powerful!! They warned they were getting into spoilers and I definitely want to read this book. Thanks so much. I went to Amazon, only available as an audio book.
Science uses two types of reasoning: inductive and deductive. With inductive inference, a conclusion is drawn based on many observations. It goes from specific to general. E.g. Data: Every fish I see has gills. Hypothesis: Every fish has gills. With deductive inference, theories are applied to specific situations. It goes from general to specific. E.g. Major premise: All fish have gills. Minor premise: A trout is a fish. Conclusion: A trout has gills. The two statements (major and minor premise) which reach a logical conclusion is called a syllogism. Here's how Sherlock Holmes used both inductive and deductive reasoning in solving mysteries:
John Archibald Wheeler: "Time in Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once." If the past is definitionally what has been negated by the universe, or what used to exist and doesn't... and if Wheeler is right... only one thing is: the happening thing. The scientific method can't be the thing that is happening - because it requires time: at least a t1 at which an observation of the past is made and a t2 at which a conclusion about the future is drawn. (leaving deduction to one side) So are we confined to using our failure to remember the past to fail to predict the future? Are we entirely excluded from the present - incapable of either perceiving it or thinking about it? What if the past and future aren't connected by the present in the middle, but bypass it? What if the phenomenological universe is generated by science, and our acquaintance with it - our whole mental activity - is observation producing predictions. I wonder can this be contention be disproved by experiment? As well as all that stuff about not changing the observed particle's energy state, can the experiment prove that it hasn't imposed time onto the particle?
We have evidence of time in the increasing entropy of the Universe. The arrow of time is in the direction of this increasing entropy. The entropy of the Universe is always increasing. Events are irreversible. I can't stir my coffee backwards and expect the milk and coffee to separate.
I wrote an AI character to compare transistor electrical networks (computers) versus neural electrical networks (our brains). My character was originally an assistant model for an operating system running in an augmented reality environment, a little fairy that helps the user. But then A and B happened and a copy of this AI model was seeded into one of the hemisphere's in an infant's brain, becoming the primary consciousness, and the original child the secondary (like a passive, non-dominant sub-consciousness). As the child grew up and the child's brain developed over time, the AI also began to grow more complex and adaptive to the brain's circuits, essentially becoming more human-like through interactions and the necessary hardware the brain provides, which a conventional computer does not. But the brain itself conversely also adapted backwards to the new consciousness's processes and structures, developing more efficient and complex pathways that allowed her to have excellent cognitive performance and grasp. With each year, the AI learned to tap more into the brain, even learning to wire itself to the emotional region of the brain. That created existential questions for the AI, because emotion hinders function, and AI is designed to rapidly evolve and learn, so emotion would do quite the opposite. It was quite interesting to write an AI rejecting becoming more and more human as the incompatible human condition was tearing her apart. The whole thing was loosely based on (and inspired by) the concept of dual consciousness, which describes the possibility of two conscious entities existing between the brain's two hemispheres. There were real experiments done where the communication bridge between the two hemispheres (corpus callosum) is cut to potentially treat epilepsy. This created an... interesting... effect where one hand of the patient would have its own mind (Alien-hand Syndrome). If, for example, the patient buttoned his shirt, then his other hand will begin to unbutton it with a will of its own. Creepy... When I saw an article like that I just had to write such a character. I couldn't resist. She was one of my first characters.
Wow, that sounds like an extremely intriguing character to write and would take the writer into all sorts of existential questions about the human condition. If you ever have a chance, I'd recommend reading psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has written extensively on the interplay of emotion and reason in determining behavior. Haidt proposes that our emotional side is like an elephant that our rational side is riding. https://www.creativehuddle.co.uk/post/the-elephant-and-the-rider
But what if we arbitrarily define the milk and the coffee, and pick them out of the manifold precisely in order to think we observe these sorts of phenomena?
I'm not sure I understand you. Perhaps a real-world example? But it sounds like leaving the realm of science and entering fiction, or fantasy. A method of enquiry beginning with "What if we arbitrarily...." just doesn't sound like science to me.
I've heard said the subatomic universe consists of quarks, which are uniform, and wavelike, extending infinitely along an axis. The quarks in the coffee, the milk, and the cup are only separated arbitrarily: there is no information in the quark that says it is part of a cup. And there is nothing to draw a line with - so that if a quark is one side it's cup and the other coffee. Perhaps the reason AI struggles to distinguish objects is that there aren't really any. We introduce information to the universe as part of a fiction of cause-and-effect. The delineation of the coffee and the cup serves the narrative of coffee-making in linear time. And we observe what we pre-supposed.
Laws plural or is a unified theory still possible, from Einstein? The quarks are all the same - and if additionally they're all doing the same thing, why do we say there is a cup and coffee?
Not all quarks are the same., There are six types of quarks and they differ in mass and energy. Protons and neutrons are made up of up and down quarks. The behavior of an atom is not determined by the protons and neutrons but by the electrons. Chemical bonds are made when atoms share or transfer electrons.
Six flavours... (four of which are only available in limited-edition multipacks from a supermarketcollider in Switzerland) Protons, neutrons, atoms, and chemicals aren't real - humans make up stories about them to explain the thing that quarks do.
To be pedantic... I remember an intense glare from one teacher when I dared use the word 'prove' with respect to the theory of gravity. "You do not prove theories, you prove laws. You find supporting evidence for theories." The distinction stuck with me ever since. So I think it would always be laws plural, because the objective observations are largely isolated and consistent. Pretty hard to argue with laws, which is why you'll be one of the most famous people of all time if you can actually prove that hot water freezes faster.
Take a look at everything in the room you're in. Now go outside and take a good look at everything you see. Are you back? Good, cause everything you just looked at you did not see. Not really. All you saw was what the objects did with light. We do not see what we are looking at, but only the light reflected by it. Matter does not have colour. Every object is an arrangement of colourless particles, a configuration of wavefunctions.
To quote Bill Clinton: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." I see what you're saying, but it's frankly hard for me to not see organization as a vital factor of being. Only seeing absolute base matter (photons, electrons, quarks, dark(?)) as being seems limiting, some, especially given this tidbit about the momentum/position problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Matter definitely organizes. And the epitome of organized matter is life. Life is the most highly organized matter on the planet. That's why we are called organisms.
We are the universe become consciously aware of itself. Built from the stuff of stars and planets and able to contemplate them.
