The Philosophy Thread


I ssooooooo had a theory about the expanding universe (a couple of pages back now). It was basically that the universes is acting like gas in a vacuum, and spreading out to fill it all. Not really thought to expand on it more. It's just a thought that popped into my head a few days ago then popped out of it again.


I also don't really believe in 'dark matter', so I could just be a total nut :p
 
mali said:
Determinism is basically an empirical observation and can't be verified nor falsified. Determinism is irrelevant. It's like sieving sand without a sieve. Everything falls through and you don't get answers.
Well, we have to base our reasoning on *something*, and determinism is almost like an axiom for most sciences. It's a cornerstone to logic and reasoning in general.

If you say that determinism is irrelevant, you can't use things that are based on determinism such as stochastic, probability theory or other deterministic abstractions. So we basically lose the ability to reason about anything that we don't observe in detail directly with our bare eyes, because everything at a higher level of abstraction requires the use of probabilistic abstractions and flow analysis etc.

Example:
Person A: "Oh, I put this methanol into this solution of ethanoic acid and get a layer of methyl ethanoate (acetate). This must mean that I've found a reliable method to produce acetate."
Person B: "No, dude; how do you know that the acetate came into existence because you put those two things together? It might just have been coincidence; as you know, we can't rely on any theory that states that an experiment is reproducible under the same starting conditions."
Person A: "What!? But that's strange, I thought that the reproducibility of experiments was one of the foundational axioms of science!"
Person B: "Nope, not any more. Some guy realized that we can't depend on determinism any more, so you'll just have to expect your reaction to produce nitroglycerin the next time you carry it through. Or for red bunnies to appear. Or for the universe to end."

EDIT: Darn IUPAC naming conventions...
 
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^ That's exactly an example for different scales ;)

The further I abstract, the less meaningful the theory becomes. At a scale of the experiment you describe, determinism is strong and not very abstract. The larger the scale the less information is in what determinism really means. You are applying determinism to the hole existence, which might be ok, but completely unsuitable to describe things like free will.

I just did some wiki browsing to understand what determinism is supposed to mean and found funny things like a demon that could be able to predict the future. What you need to predict the future would have to be more complex than what it tries to predict, hence it couldn't exist because only what exists does exist and nothing beyond. So in retrospective view you could conclude that things can only happen in one way because you are unable to prove it could have happened differently. This is a point where science turns into faith, imo.

Things definitely do only happen in one way and not an other, but this is such a weak observation that I can't conclude anything from it. It fails to describe free will, imo.

edit:
To clarify, the "larger scale" is not meant literally, literally it would in fact be the smaller scale. Another example for inversion ;)
 
mali said:
Determinism is basically an empirical observation and can't be verified nor falsified. Determinism is irrelevant. It's like sieving sand without a sieve. Everything falls through and you don't get answers.
I agree with this and I also agree that determinism fails to describe free will, but where are you expecting to get your answers from? Has your philosophy produced any answers? The only answer I can see is that certain things are indeterminable.
 
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Mr.Confuzed said:
I agree with this and I also agree that determinism fails to describe free will, but where are you expecting to get your answers from? Has your philosophy produced any answers?

I enjoy following tangents very much. As I have no clear goal nor a clear path when thinking about things I cover many pieces of the puzzle over time. I have this feeling in the back of my mind that something is brewing there, but I can't access it. Right now I think that time is not _that_ important any more and the mystery of life is the more important tangent to think about.
 
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dflemstr said:
If you say that determinism is irrelevant, you can't use things that are based on determinism such as stochastic, probability theory or other deterministic abstractions.

But probability is NOT determinism, ie pure deductive reasoning. You present things as either deterministic or non-deterministic, but probabilistic reasoning is a middle ground between the two. For example, imagine a truly random coin flip. If you flip the coin several times the probability of it landing heads or tails is 50% each. Meaning by definition if you flip the coin an infinite number of times it'll converge at half heads, half tails. But for any given flip you can't determine it, so you can't say that this is system is purely deterministic, nor can you say that no reasoning can be made about the system. I understand that a real coin flip wouldn't be considered purely random, so please take this as an abstract analogy.

In the same way that the overall ratio of flips looks deterministic, while individual flips do not, the universe can very well have this same kind of probabilistic split between the macroscopic and the microscopic. Quantum mechanics states that the position of an atomic electron relative to its nucleus is non-deterministic, but is governed by probability that restrains it within a proximity cloud. ie, it's impossible to determine at any given instance where the electron is based on the state of the universe one time tick (planck second) back. But probability lets us predict, with great confidence, that it will still be within the cloud. This kind of reliable probability in turn gives us what appear to be deterministic results at a higher level. But ultimately, quantum mechanics allow for an outlier to this.

Given that we don't fully understand human consciousness, it's not impossible for it to reflect some kind of quantum state that allows for randomness.

On the other hand, I think this is somewhat of a moot discussion, because in a large sense "determinism" is somewhat of a relative concept. If given a system where observers are, under no exception, disallowed from some knowledge then the system will never appear deterministic no matter how much it may be an in an "absolute" sense. From a philosophical point of view I think this has significant bearing when considering human limitations.
 
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Say mathematically you can define my algorithm / AI (yes I am dunce), or anybody elses for that matter.

Could you not from the interactions of all our algorithms define mathematically the outcome of all our interactions, and say from that fate is pre ordained, i.e. much like the clockwork of the solar system, we know when summer, or winter is due (I say due as we really have screwed this up a bit).

Say, all past present future exists simultaneously, and time is the vessel that takes us through all this, and it is our conciousness, that takes us through our waking and sleeping moments. Yet our conciousness can transcend the physical state, of our mental physical mind, beyond the boundaries of linear time, through meditation, and also during sleep (an altered state), and show us things past, present, or future, or even better go beyond (this dimensional). We are travelling in a linear fashion through time in the physical, but there is no restriction of time (dimension), placed on our conciousness.

Of course this is all subject to your personal belief system / reasoning.
 
Exophase said:
But probability is NOT determinism, ie pure deductive reasoning. You present things as either deterministic or non-deterministic, but probabilistic reasoning is a middle ground between the two. For example, imagine a truly random coin flip. If you flip the coin several times the probability of it landing heads or tails is 50% each. Meaning by definition if you flip the coin an infinite number of times it'll converge at half heads, half tails. But for any given flip you can't determine it, so you can't say that this is system is purely deterministic, nor can you say that no reasoning can be made about the system. I understand that a real coin flip wouldn't be considered purely random, so please take this as an abstract analogy.
I am of the impression that the system is completely deterministic, the only difference between the two outlined aspects being that you in one case have a deterministic function λa.c[sub]a[/sub] where you make an abstraction over the behavior of something dependent on the world state, and in the other case have the outcome c[sub]a[/sub] as values of this function given specific world states. The process is still completely deterministic; the only problem is that you lack sufficient information to be able to calculate c[sub]a[/sub] in the individual case, and need to see an abstraction of the function to be able to determine what the common world state is for the function to have a certain outcome.

Described more concretely:
  • A process that is considered random is a function whose parameter (world state) remains largely unknown.
  • Probability theory is the art of abstracting over multiple world states to, given certain "outcome" world states, be able to come to conclusions about what the "initial" world state must have been, and thus being able to create partial functions mapping certain world states to certain outcomes. E.g. throwing a coin on Earth (initial world state) roughly yields a 1:1 chance of heads vs tails landing (outcome world state; the "randomness" is just a missing parameter to the function), throwing it on a small moon (different initial world state) yields a 0:0 chance of heads vs tails landing (conflict), throwing it inside of a medium-sized star yields a 0 chance of it landing at all (different function entirely), etc. I've just described 3 partial functions between world states that can be used for fundamental reasoning.
  • There is nothing in existence that is purely deterministic, because you can never know the entire state of the universe (See the paradox related to Maxwell's demon); every conclusion is probabilistic and every deterministic function is always partially applied.
Exophase said:
In the same way that the overall ratio of flips looks deterministic, while individual flips do not, the universe can very well have this same kind of probabilistic split between the macroscopic and the microscopic. Quantum mechanics states that the position of an atomic electron relative to its nucleus is non-deterministic, but is governed by probability that restrains it within a proximity cloud. ie, it's impossible to determine at any given instance where the electron is based on the state of the universe one time tick (planck second) back. But probability lets us predict, with great confidence, that it will still be within the cloud. This kind of reliable probability in turn gives us what appear to be deterministic results at a higher level. But ultimately, quantum mechanics allow for an outlier to this.
Yes, this is the current model that is being used, and it works, and it might very well be that the movement of an electron entity is completely non-deterministic, in that even if we knew the whole state of the universe, and had infinite computing power (aka we were able to run an infinite loop in 0 seconds - that kind of computing power), we still would be unable to determine the nature of the electron's movement. But to say that "The movement of foobar is non-deterministic" is an unfounded explanation for the phenomenon that doesn't lead anywhere, because we need deterministic behavior to be able to draw conclusions, and saying that "The electron deterministically moves non-deterministically" is just a fallacy. So it might be that the movement of the electron is non-deterministic, but we cannot use reason to determine (← hint, hint) this. I am of the belief (it can't be anything else at this point since we lack empirical evidence for either conclusion) that the absolute movement of the elementary charge (be it the electron or something lower-level) is deterministic, and that we just as of now are unable to gather enough data and lack the sufficient models to be able to determine its behavior.

Exophase said:
Given that we don't fully understand human consciousness, it's not impossible for it to reflect some kind of quantum state that allows for randomness.
We can only work with existing models at this point, and since the field of psychoanalysis hasn't reached the point that we're able to make connections between the movement of sub-atomic particles and human behavior, we can't reason with world-states at the quantum level yet. So I tried to argue with what's known in the field of psychoanalysis today, and given the current models, it would seem that human behavior is deterministic.

Exophase said:
On the other hand, I think this is somewhat of a moot discussion, because in a large sense "determinism" is somewhat of a relative concept. If given a system where observers are, under no exception, disallowed from some knowledge then the system will never appear deterministic no matter how much it may be an in an "absolute" sense. From a philosophical point of view I think this has significant bearing when considering human limitations.
Hey, we're in a philosophy thread. Most of what's being said here is moot in the long run anyways. ;)
But yeah, we brought up free choice etc, and in order for us to be able to discuss it at some higher level than "I dunno whether we possess a free will, do you?" "Nah...", determinism had to be brought in at some point. If we choose not to go down that alley, and say "Nope, we can't assume that the universe is completely deterministic", then we have to pull in other solutions to the problem such as "We have a soul" or "The universe is really one creature with a vivid imagination" or "We serve as power sources for a robot civilization and are trapped in a virtual reality to suppress our revelation of this fact" etc. To me, not such viable alternatives.

Anyways, thanks for your input, it really contributed to the discussion, because you introduced a new point of view that I wouldn't have thought of. It's possible to imagine that the universe really is a big state machine, that operates via abstractions, and that as soon as you reach a certain micro level, it breaks down, and resorts to chaotic noise to accommodate for the microscopic observations being made. I.e. there aren't really any subatomic particles; they only spring into existence on-demand as they are needed, namely when an observation is being made, and they behave chaotically as an optimization performed by the universe. Further: it might be that, in the medieval times, the Earth really wasn't round, and it only "became" round once humans started making observations and had to find explanations for phenomena such as gravity, or why the sun stood at certain angles relative to certain wells, or why ships were gradually disappearing while moving towards the horizon. Et cetera. Crazy? Maybe, but plausible within the realm of Philosophy at least.
 
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This thread is awesome!
Also, dflemstr, you are basically saying what I intend to just much much better! :)

I wonder then how you view this: If the universe is deterministic, and thus everything that happens is inevitable, does that mean we are all part of an extremely large and complicated "program" (for lack of a better word) that has an inevitable conclusion that must happen?

Or maybe, like other theories I've read, the big bang is a repeating process where the universe expands and then collapses, over and over. Or perhaps, the universe is created by the previous universe, and it's up to us eventually to create the next?

Also, consider this: Common belief today says that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. Which means there is only X amount of energy, and which would also seem to indicate that the Big Bang contained all of the energy of the entire Universe, exploding at once. All that energy, enough to form every star every tug of gravity everything everywhere throughout all of the universe, AND enough to keep pushing the universe to expand. Eventually, in theory, there would not be enough energy to expand any more, as more and more is transferred to stars and such, and the universe would have to stop expanding. Which does not seem to coexist well with the infinite universe theory (but who knows). Once that point is reached however (and I forget what it's called), the vacuum of space in the universe between matter might cause it to start collapsing, reabsorbing all of that energy more and more until it reaches some kind of super duper mega singularity then BAM big bang super explosion starting it all again.

I probably explained that all wrong, but that's kind of what I got from the expand->collapse->expand theory.

- trix
 
What if we are all entities in some computer simulation and the big bang occured because some person in the parent universe of ours (the one where the simulation is run) wrote and executed a perl script....
 
Mr.Confuzed said:
Come on, we all know how the big bang happened. It sure as hell wasn't no perl script.

Yeah that was a long time ago it was probably FORTRAN or something.
 
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We all know that the universe is written in LISP.

trix said:
I wonder then how you view this: If the universe is deterministic, and thus everything that happens is inevitable, does that mean we are all part of an extremely large and complicated "program" (for lack of a better word) that has an inevitable conclusion that must happen?
Heh, this idea is very plausible, and actually quite popular. Has anyone here read Isaac Asimov's classic "Foundation" series? Short spoiler that is a little off-topic but relevant to this discussion (no turning points are revealed):
The Foundation is... founded... because a scientist called Hari Seldon invents an algorithm that explains the universe; i.e. it's the algorithm that, given one universe state, you're able to compute "the next" universe state. The world formula. So he stores this algorithm in a storage unit called "the prime radiator" (the algorithm is, as I understand it, many gigabytes long) and uses computers to compute the future of the universe, in broad terms (because you can't have a computer that simulates the whole universe in every detail - it would have to be as large as the universe in that case). He then somehow figures out how to alter the universe so that the future looks brighter for humankind (aka. "What needs to be changed for us to prosper?") and starts a project called "The Foundation" that is supposed to make these changes to the world.

But yes, I believe that the Universe is like a cellular automaton (as I said before) that had some starting state (The "pea of the Big Bang") and some algorithm that transforms the current state of the universe every (digital) Planck second. Download a simulator for Conway's Game of Life (e.g. Golly) and load a really huge world (browse the examples until you find one), and you'll see what I mean: with extremely simple rules (aka a simple algorithm) it's possible to create extremely complex worlds.

trix said:
Or maybe, like other theories I've read, the big bang is a repeating process where the universe expands and then collapses, over and over.
This is also very possible. It really depends on how the starting conditions are; imagine if the Big Bang origin was quite small aka. not very massive. It would then have created an universe that didn't expand very quickly, and gravity would have made it pull itself back into the origin again.

trix said:
Or perhaps, the universe is created by the previous universe, and it's up to us eventually to create the next?
You mean like, recursion? Or something like that we have to create a "Noah's Ark" before some huge catastrophe happens?
If you mean the former, feel free to read this *very philosophically interesting* forum post.
If you mean the latter; well, our science can't predict that anything like that will ever occur, so it's hard to say.

trix said:
Also, consider this: Common belief today says that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. Which means there is only X amount of energy, and which would also seem to indicate that the Big Bang contained all of the energy of the entire Universe, exploding at once. All that energy, enough to form every star every tug of gravity everything everywhere throughout all of the universe, AND enough to keep pushing the universe to expand. Eventually, in theory, there would not be enough energy to expand any more, as more and more is transferred to stars and such, and the universe would have to stop expanding. Which does not seem to coexist well with the infinite universe theory (but who knows). Once that point is reached however (and I forget what it's called), the vacuum of space in the universe between matter might cause it to start collapsing, reabsorbing all of that energy more and more until it reaches some kind of super duper mega singularity then BAM big bang super explosion starting it all again.
Well, the force of gravity is too weak in our universe for it to pull itself together again. Think of it like this: a galaxy is moving away from us at some speed x. Our gravity pulls at it, so it slows down to say, x - 3 km/s or whatever. But during that time, it will have traveled a couple of thousand kilometers already, so "the next time" we pull at it, we'll reduce it's speed by even less, and always even less, until our pull is too insignificant for it to be measurable at all (this is already the case for most galaxies). I'm too tired to write about what might happen instead in the long run (we might reach infinite entropy some time in the future) because it's 3am here, but I'll write some more some other time.
 
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trix said:
Common belief today says that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.
That's actually debatable. The moon orbits the Earth. Which means that its velocity must constantly be changing. Which means that it is constantly accelerating. Which means that energy must be converted into motion. Which means that gravity is a constant source of unlimited energy.
 
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dflemstr said:
trix said:
Or perhaps, the universe is created by the previous universe, and it's up to us eventually to create the next?
You mean like, recursion? Or something like that we have to create a "Noah's Ark" before some huge catastrophe happens?
I mean the former, not the latter.
dflemstr said:
If you mean the former, feel free to read this *very philosophically interesting* forum post.

Whoa...! I mean... whoa! That was...fucking... AWESOME! Blew my mind. Where can I find more!
 
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Aethix said:
trix said:
Common belief today says that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.
That's actually debatable. The moon orbits the Earth. Which means that its velocity must constantly be changing. Which means that it is constantly accelerating. Which means that energy must be converted into motion. Which means that gravity is a constant source of unlimited energy.
Newtons physics equations are false. His laws are correct, but his formulas aren't. Gravity isn't a force - it's a bend in time-space. The Moon is actually moving perfectly straight in a higher dimension, it's just that the Earth's gravity well makes the Moon's movement manifest itself as a curve in our dimensions. Read more about Einstein's theory of relativity and you'll get what I mean.
 
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The big bang, firstly it is the ultimate sterilising event.

This was deliberate, for purification of all matter.

The subsequent matter was made to exist in harmony (balance), so physically it is in a neutral state. This then allowed for order, as it settled and formed the physical, and the non physical, in proportion.

If there was an inbalance of proportion, then there would be a ripple (understatement) of disturbance in the fabric of this universe, i.e. if you left this universe, and travelled to another, or vice versa, you would upset the balance of both (if travel was feasible / possible).

We are advised by current (paid) scientists that life came to our planet, from space, riding on debris (and they explain no further),exactly where from is not given. Yet the big bang sterilised all matter, in the universe. Life would have to of been seeded (introduced), into this universe, from beyond, using a method that would not upset the balance (which would only result in the destruction of the very life introduced). Yet our very atoms (physical body) originate from this very universe.

For example take a look into life forms, you will note that to exist in this world, they have something like a 98% match in the DNA. We see this 98% (match), as a DNA base pattern for life, for our world. It appears that life was externally created for this very world we have been put in, to live in.

Creation of the universe, and the introduction of life were both deliberate, and from beyond the boundary of our (physical) universe, where we can not yet reach for answers, of our true origin.

Of course this is all subject to your personal belief system / reasoning.
 
It might be that we are simply not yet able to understand what the universe is. Personally I decided that the main problem is being bound to our four dimensions(while I still think that time is an effect and no dimension of its own).
It would be really interesting to construct a phantasy world where the future alters the past. According to dflemstr's explanation timetravel is not possible in a common sense, but let's just try to imagine how such an influence of the future on the past would look like.

edit:
I like dflemstr's example about the medieval flat earth. The observer creates the world. Does that mean the observer observs the past and therefore changes it? The scientists today declare the world round and so change the medieval world to be round too. From a philosophical point of view this works quite well.

So the first step is done, a phantasy world where the future alters the past exists now. What are the consequences?
 
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