tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12199433902090864982024-03-05T17:04:27.183+08:00A Shed Down UnderJohn S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-18207667762527818112019-01-09T13:13:00.003+08:002019-01-09T15:19:47.358+08:00A Simplified Taxonomy of LogicFor purposes of self-auditing and identifying times when I may not be reasoning in a completely reliable manner, I maintain a taxonomy of reasoning modes along with clearly identified ways they could be used incorrectly. Since this may conceivably be helpful to others, I present it here.<br />
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<b>Linear Reasoning</b>. A conclusion (C) follows directly or nearly so from a proposition (P). The validity of the conclusion rests on the validity of the proposition and the evidence for it. The linear relationship is itself testable empirically and auditable mathematically or logically, and therefore conclusive if demonstrated. Lack of evidence for the proposition or even evidence against the proposition argues somewhat against the conclusion, but cannot rule out the conclusion being correct and reachable by some other means. However evidence against the conclusion is strongly disqualifying of the proposition (known as Transposition in logic - if P implies C, then no C implies no P), and in cases of a very well supported proposition, it argues against the logical relationship itself. A faulty relationship (i.e. a logical error or fallacy) alone also does not rule out either the proposition or the conclusion, since they may still be able to be connected by some other less fallacious process.<br />
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<b>Parabolic Reasoning</b> or reasoning by analogy. This is a fundamentally unreliable form of reasoning and is never conclusive, but can be useful for purposes of communicating otherwise reliable results or anticipating results yet to be established. The process is to draw a parallel between a (presumably) established line connecting an established proposition and its conclusion (P1 -> C1), and using that to propose or argue (weakly) for a similar relationship between some other proposition and the new target conclusion (P2 -> C2). Similarity in no way guarantees that such a relationship exists, but where Linear Reasoning has independently demonstrated the relationship and where the proposition is supported by evidence, parabolic reasoning can become a shorthand for introducing others to the result.<br />
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<b>Hyperbolic Reasoning</b>. If Parabolic Reasoning is unreliable, then Hyperbolic Reasoning is even less so. An analogy to an established proposition-conclusion relation is not only made but stretched and compounded (P2 -> -> C2). While the modified parallel relationship is even less assured and a conclusion thus reached is even more speculative, hyperbolic reasoning (as with parabolic) may be a discursive tool and further may be useful in producing hypothetical relationships or propositions that may warrant empirical investigation. This may be necessary for example when there is some evidence to suggest a conclusion, and an explanation for that conclusion is being sought. Parabolic and Hyperbolic Reasoning may thus be a means of generating candidate explanations. Generally, however, when a line connecting a proposition to a conclusion is found to be not only a mere parallel to an established relationship but a distended, stretched, and modified version of that relationship, the conclusion as well as its line of reasoning must be regarded with even greater skepticism.<br />
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<b>Circular Reasoning</b>. A proposition can sometimes also be reached by way of linear reasoning from its own conclusion in a process that is more than just the converse of the original P -> C reasoning, i.e. P -1> C -2> P. If either statement are supported by evidence other than each other, then this is not necessarily wrong and is in fact fairly common. Note that only valid linear reasoning in both directions results in a true (as opposed to apparent) circular reasoning loop. Even if each point is the only evidence offered in support of the other, a circular reasoning loop may not necessarily be wrong, because the evidence may not yet have been found that supports one or the other propositions. However, contrary evidence for either is evidence against both, which is critically unlike the case with Linear Reasoning. Normally, evidence against a proposition does not negate a conclusion because there may be other unknown ways for that conclusion to be valid. But evidence against a conclusion reached by a valid linear process from a proposition directly negates that proposition. In circular reasoning, both statements are simultaneously propositions and necessary conclusions, and therefore evidence against either is evidence against both.<br />
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<b>Elliptical Reasoning</b>. A conclusion can loop back on itself as in Circular Reasoning, but by way of at least one additional statement or conclusion. Elliptical Reasoning loops are typically only in one direction because the arguments are not just the converse (reversed) argument of each step. As before, each argument linking a conclusion to a proposition must be a valid logical step for which empirical evidence and auditable logic exists. Evidence for the propositions themselves again plays a similar role, either by supporting the entire loop or negating the entire loop, and for the same reasons given above.<br />
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<b>Spiral Reasoning</b>. Relevant mainly to Applied Science (Engineering) is the concept of iterative or spiral reasoning, in which the starting proposition in an Elliptical Reasoning sequence is known to be plausible but inaccurate. That means it is the kind of thing that could be true, but is not necessarily quantitatively true. Some people say "qualitatively" true, but this lacks precision. To be precise, P is "dimensionally" true i.e. has the correct dimensions representing the physical quantity under investigation. For example, the proposition may be, "the flow rate is 14 litres per second." It is highly unlikely that the flow rate is actually 14.0000000 l/s, but the flow rate must be <i>some </i>number of litres per second, and might in fact be within an order of magnitude or two of this value. That makes the statement plausible if technically inaccurate. From that starting P the chain of reasoning is followed, e.g. "if the flow is 14 l/s then the system pressure must be x Pascals." Real examples may involve several further steps, but at some point the conclusion from the latest proposition will be that the flow rate must be some value 'P' litres per second. This is recognized as not just the same <i>kind </i>of statement made in the first plausible but inaccurate proposition, but as a (hopefully) more accurate re-statement of that very same proposition. Thus the loop is at the same time both closed and slightly shifted in position. This process is iterated until P no longer changes in value and the elliptical reasoning loop represents an entirely self-consistent chain of reasoning. At that point, any empirical evidence supporting any one point in the chain supports the entire chain as valid. Multiple points of empirical evidence support not only the statements but the reasoning connecting them; in other words we then know the formulas are substantially true as well as the numbers.<br />
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The relationships between logical reasoning, logical fallacies, positive evidence, and negative evidence are hopefully more clear. When one can at least identify the category of an argument in this simplified taxonomy, one can more readily evaluate the soundness of the argument and when necessary identify and correct errors. When a logical step is sound, auditable, and even empirically-based, evidence in favour of a proposition may be reliably taken as evidence for a conclusion, and evidence against a conclusion as evidence against the proposition.<br />
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A typical Scientific Method (there is not just one Scientific Method but endless variants) begins not with a proposition but with a conclusion that is closely linked to an observation. An explanation is sought for this observation. It is hypothesized that the observation O is a manifestation of conclusion C, and C follows causally from proposition P by way of a proposed mechanism. Empirical evidence is then sought in support of these previously unanticipated predictions, being P and the mechanism for P -> C. Finally, direct evidence for C is sought, as is confirmation that C produces the observed effect O. This is a completely valid, reliable, and logically sound scientific process, provided it can be replicated independently.<br />
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Another version of Scientific Method proceeds in the opposite direction: proposition P is asserted leading to the conclusion C; evidence for C is observed, and therefore P is accepted - or is it? This is completely wrong, of course, because evidence for C does not prove P. One looks instead for <i>falsification </i>of C,or evidence <i>against </i>C in order to confidently reject P. This is also a reliable and valid scientific process, and has the advantage of being less vulnerable to confirmation biases.John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-82547337968296209892018-12-13T09:46:00.001+08:002018-12-13T12:55:29.355+08:00What Is Occam's Razor and Why Does It MatterIn the early 14th century the English logician William of Ockham promoted an idea simply stated as "Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity." By this he meant (as he expounded in his writings) that in order to explain something, one should make the smallest possible number of wild assumptions. Otherwise known as the Law of Parsimony (due to the implied frugality or nearness with speculation and hypotheses, "parsimony" being a word that means something like "cheapskate"), this has since become more widely recognized as Occam's Razor, cutting and scraping away the improbable from the reasonable.<br />
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This rule-of-thumb concords with more precise, modern analytical methods including Bayesian theory, in which every additional assumption needed to support a hypothesis reduces the probability of the issue. For instance, two marginally probable circumstances together are significantly less probable than either one on its own. This is why Conspiracy Theories become less and less reasonable for every element that must be added to get it to hold together.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even Monks / Like to be seen /<br />
Looking suave and clean / Burma Shave!</td></tr>
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And as with all forms of Abductive Reasoning, the Law of Parsimony is not an infallible arbiter of Truth, but is more like a reverse-truth-detector that beeps more insistently the further from truth one strays. It is useful as a kind of triage for selecting which hypotheses may be more productively tested, whether through falsification or verification.<br />
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While Ockham was evidently familiar with literal razors and their ordinary use, as a Franciscan Monk, a Deist, and a Theologian, he ironically made rather poor use of his eponymous Razor in his acceptance of gods and the supernatural. We might forgive him, however, since at the time there were a number of legitimately open questions relating to physics and biology that resisted explanation. This state of ignorance (a direct consequence of christianity's relentless suppression of scientific progress since the Roman Empire) could not <i>prima facie</i> rule out the existence of supernatural agencies as an explanation for biology and physics. I mean, other than the obvious absurdity of the very idea of magic sky-men.<br />
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The situation is different today, and the open questions that once admitted supernatural agency as a possible explanation are now quite settled without any appeal to the supernatural and requiring no agency or intelligence whatsoever. Since then, new questions have been both asked and answered, again without need of any intervention by magic invisible wizards. The evidence points rather to no such intervention ever having occurred.</div>
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Yet on the other hand we might not forgive him this failure to apply his own fundamental rule of rationality. One may defend William of Ockham by pointing out that he was at least a <i>mono</i>theist, and thus walked his talk by not multiplying entities without necessity - just one invisible wizard accounted for all that could be seen. But was that really true? Was it though? Was he indeed a monotheist? And is one magic man really sufficient to account for the world he observed? </div>
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While christianity insists on the label "monotheistic," it does not walk the talk. To explain the entirety of observed reality, they have posited not just one but an entire pantheon of magical beings. To begin with, their wholly "good" god has to have a counterpart, Satan, to account for the existence of "evil" (the existence of which is more assumed than detected as substantive). This "enemy" actually cooperates with their main god to obediently torture all the souls who are not sufficiently in god's camp. Then, evidently lacking both the omnipotence and the goodness to forgive, their omnipotent and infinitely good god needs another god to act as an intercessory for us naughty imperfect creations that an infinitely wise and good god allegedly created to be like this. And even that being insufficient for ordinary daily needs, William of Ockham as a member of his church in good standing officially supported a long list of saints, angels, demons, spirits, and other beings (seraphim, cherubim, etc), all of which are indistinguishable from the kinds of entities that the acknowledged polytheistic pagan religions had in multiplicity. </div>
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This confused incoherent tangle of theology is a direct and demonstrable consequence of the syncretic origins of christianity - cobbled together from random bits of numerous previous religions, from zoroastrianism, caananite religions, egyptian cults, and the long lists of greek, roman, nordic, and vedic gods. Religion has evolved in a clearly Darwinian struggle for survival. Religious ideas have over the centuries accumulated through random permutations certain "sticky" adaptations that make them harder to get rid of and thus more likely to produce offshoots of ever-widening variety. </div>
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The divergence and proliferation of religions tells us two important things about it. 1) There is no underlying reality or truth towards which religion is converging, as can be observed in other pursuits such as the natural sciences. 2) Religion possesses no means of adjudicating its assertions. Whenever any two theologians disagree, they split and two new religions are born.</div>
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Occam's Razor properly applied is a useful way of avoiding such fruitless pursuits. In the first place, modern science does not have any need to appeal to magical agency for explanations for things, rendering any such appeal unnecessary and hence immediately excluded by Occam's Razor, which I remind us states that "Entities are not to be multiplied without <i>necessity</i>."</div>
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Secondly, we can see in countless instances that an invocation of even one magical agency is never enough, and leads to a never-ending cascade (or <i>multiplication</i>) of further invocations and assumptions; inventions, and speculations. Opening the door to even one absurdity invites a flood of absurdities to follow. </div>
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Analogously, just one Epicycle was never enough to explain the motions of planets in a geocentric cosmology: you needed either an infinity of epicycles lacking any explanation or mechanism (the nature of which only invited - demanded even - further speculation), or you could adopt just one heliocentric model that does not insist upon ideologically pure circular orbits to substantially solve the problem. Just one more idea - Relativity - gets you all the rest of the way to explaining everything about celestial mechanics. This is what is meant by an economy or parsimony of ideas. </div>
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When you are on the wrong track, sometimes a proliferation of necessary assumptions is the warning sign you need to turn back and try something else. This is the power of Occam's Razor: to shave away unproductive wild speculation of things we do not and cannot know anything about, and focus instead on a few things we can know and test. </div>
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The inventor of a thing is rarely its most accomplished practitioner (ref Adolphe Sax whom nobody remembers for his swingin' tunes and sick jams). William of Ockham was no exception. Had he applied his razor to his mind as diligently as he did to his face, he would have not wasted any time worrying about what gods were like. </div>
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John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-79507189753319154492018-07-24T23:56:00.000+08:002018-07-25T11:03:53.403+08:00Can You Prove a Negative?People who learn a <i>little </i>about Scientific Method or Logic often proudly declare that You Can't Prove A Negative. The problem is that they stopped learning science just a wee bit too early. What they think they know about Scientific Method is really a mis-application of a quickie rule of thumb for how to construct a well-stated hypothesis for the kind of experiment you have in mind. <i>Prove a Negative</i> is shorthand for <i>confirm a negative hypothesis</i>.<br />
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A negative hypothesis is just a testable statement framed as a negative, along the lines of <i>humans can't fly</i>. How can we ever prove that? We could certainly disprove it by producing even one verified instance of a human that flies. But to positively prove that humans can't fly, other than specific instances of specific humans failing to fly on specific days, defies logic. The best you can do is to show evidence that supports it (humans hitting the ground in undeniably un-flight-like fashion), and then to <i>conditionally accept </i>the hypothesis, or regard it as <i>indistinguishable from true</i>. For the time being. Until we someday get better at distinguishing.<br />
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The perfect hypothesis in the perfect experiment would either be fully confirmed or fully disconfirmed by the experiment. But this rarely happens. Usually the best we can do is to either disconfirm a falsifiable hypothesis, or to confirm a confirmatory hypothesis.<br />
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To falsify a falsifiable hypothesis means that the hypothesis is definitely disproved. It is conclusively rejected, never to rise again. If we fail to disprove a falsifiable hypothesis, then it might be true, but it might still be false as well. It just means we were unable to reject it this time on the basis of this evidence from this experiment. In the light of lots of other experiments all of which likewise failed to falsify the hypothesis, we might be forced to accept the hypothesis as indistinguishable from true around the time we run out of ways of testing the hypothesis.<br />
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The Natural Sciences tend to use falsifiable hypotheses because it is the most reliable way of finding out objective facts. Only something that is virtually indistinguishable from true can withstand a determined, persistent onslaught of experiments seeking to disconfirm it. It is just too easy to find evidence that confirms (erroneously) what you want to be true, because this is a basic operational bias of the human brain.<br />
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Falsifying is also a very efficient way of clearing out the myriad possible explanations that are wrong in order to zero in on the one that is right. And it is generally easier to falsify or prove wrong a positive statement about what is, rather than a negative statement about what isn't. <i>All humans can fly </i>is readily disproved; whereas <i>no humans can fly </i>is a lot harder to disprove, and these are not the only two possibilities.<br />
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You can see how easy it is to frame a hypothesis as either positive or negative. Just be careful about false binaries. If one explanation fails, it isn't automatically the competing one. If <i>all humans can fly </i>fails, it does not automatically follow that no humans can fly, or that <i>all humans can't fly</i>. It just means you weren't able to do it that time. Perhaps humans can <i>sometimes</i> fly, with the right sort of suit and a good running start. <i>NO</i> capes, though. No capes!<br />
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Applied Science (e.g. engineering) tends to use confirmatory or provable hypotheses because it is the more efficient way to invent things. "Cameras are possible, because look at this working prototype I just made." Hypothesis confirmed in one experiment. Or you could frame the hypothesis as <i>cameras are impossible </i>and disconfirm that with the same single experiment. But most of the time <i>x is impossible </i>is not the preferred way to frame a hypothesis in Applied Science. The first ninety-nine camera prototypes that didn't work could be taken (erroneously) as evidence supporting this poorly framed hypothesis. The injunction <i>you can't prove a negative </i>is more a rule against framing hypotheses as negatives - a rule that is also frequently broken when appropriate to do so.<br />
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I still haven't answered the question - can you ever prove a negative hypothesis of the type <i>XYZ does not exist</i>? Is it ever possible to confirm this kind of hypothesis? Many top scientists will say, on principle, "No." But what if I gave you an example of Science positively proving the non-existence of something? And to make it harder, what if the thing already had scientific evidence for it and the beginnings of a consensus on its existence?<br />
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Our story starts in France in 1903. Respected and accomplished physicist Prosper-René Blondlot (1849 - 1930) needed an explanation for some weird shit his experiments were doing, and he also <i>really </i>needed to keep up with the other scientists of the age who were discovering new rays left and right. X-rays. Alpha Rays. Gamma Rays. Beta Rays. Is there <i>no end</i> to the vast variety of rays to be discovered in Nature? Well, actually, that was . . . um . . . that's pretty much all of them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJBjCisEMofxTaQnuh7PCK3Y3dCpozg2HpqL7_DwC11zEBq4WVOW3zVNYDWw3kRP4O94T4tJUu9AnYYE_hqa1JrzOcsHQKjTlOfuozHr3NNnEkd8Vasj5Pq00yA_SFBwj9HkUZQojjBhU/s1600/Prosper_Ren%25C3%25A9_Blondlot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="247" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJBjCisEMofxTaQnuh7PCK3Y3dCpozg2HpqL7_DwC11zEBq4WVOW3zVNYDWw3kRP4O94T4tJUu9AnYYE_hqa1JrzOcsHQKjTlOfuozHr3NNnEkd8Vasj5Pq00yA_SFBwj9HkUZQojjBhU/s200/Prosper_Ren%25C3%25A9_Blondlot.jpg" width="164" /></a>In any case, Blondlot wishfully assumed an experimental glitch he was seeing must be caused by one of these new Rays everyone was constantly discovering, which he named N-Rays. He set up a new cockamamie experiment that was guaranteed to not detect any other previously discovered kind of ray, and immediately found what he was looking for. Once he reported this amazing discovery, other scientists started reporting confirmations of his discovery in their own labs. Soon, N-Rays were being reported emanating from a wide range of materials with the oddly specific exceptions of green wood and rock salt.<br />
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N-Ray Mania swept France, and in just the first half of 1904 over 50 scientific papers were published on the subject (compared to just 3 about X-Rays). Eventually there would be over 300 papers on N-Rays. Over 120 other scientists confirmed the existence and properties of N-Rays. A serious dispute arose over who was the first to discover N-Rays emanating from the human body. The French Academy of Sciences awarded Blondlot a prize of Fr 50,000 (almost $600,000 in today's money). He had international fame, was a national hero in France, and he had his eye on a Nobel Prize.<br />
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Only problem was, N-Rays don't exist. They never did.<br />
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And Science proved it with one simple experiment. Well, a meta-experiment actually. A wickedly clever and devious experiment conducted on the way N-Ray Science was being done.<br />
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So how do you confirm the hypothesis <i>N-Rays Don't Exist</i>? Well, if N-Rays are a mere phantasm in the minds of scientists (and there was some reason to suspect this alternative explanation) then crucially disrupting the experiment without the knowledge of the scientist should have no effect on the "positive" results of experiment.<br />
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The fact that many eminent German and British scientists were entirely unable to replicate Blondlot's discoveries, and that the detection required the involved natural senses of the researchers, made hallucination one possible explanation for the phenomenon of N-Rays. This hypothesis is testable in an experiment conducted on N-Ray Science rather than on N-Rays themselves. If N-Ray Science is not affected by disabling the apparatus in a way unknown to and undetectable by the researcher, then this should only be possible if N-Ray Science is basically hallucinations (or outright fraud) on the part of the researchers. An <a href="https://aussieshed.blogspot.com/2018/07/examining-objectivity.html" target="_blank">objective phenomenon</a> is supremely sensitive to technical faults in the apparatus; a subjective experience requires only a belief in the apparatus.<br />
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Unfair, you say? Unethical? Well they started it. Those researchers inserted themselves into the experiment, so I say it is fair game to conduct experiments upon them without their knowledge. Today most science utilizes electronic or otherwise mechanized detection, measurement, and data collection instrumentation in order to prevent the biases of the faulty human brain from contaminating the data. In cases where this is not possible, the gold standard is a double-blind study, in which neither the researchers nor the subjects (where relevant) know what they are doing or often what the experiment is even about. Only the designer of the study knows, and she is explicitly forbidden from participating in the data collection or analysis, and definitely forbidden from winking and gesturing in the researchers' direction.<br />
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In this case, American physicist Robert W. Wood traveled to Blondlot's laboratory in Nancy, France in September 1904. His perceived impartiality as neither British nor German was essential to this project. Whilst Blondlot happily demonstrated the "detection" of N-Rays, Wood removed a crucial part of the experimental apparatus without Blondlot's knowledge, which according to N-Ray theory should have rendered detection of N-Rays utterly impossible. But Blondlot continued counting and recording N-Rays on his phosphor screen, oblivious to the sabotage. Wood meanwhile was unable to observe any N-Rays, either before or after disabling the apparatus. "Not those big, obvious flashes of light," Blondlot explained, "Look for the much, much fainter ones." Yeah right - the ones that look just like what you see when you close your eyes.<br />
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Since N-Rays were detectable only by certain people and detectable whether the apparatus was operational or not, since N-Rays were never able to be recorded photographically in spite of numerous determined efforts, and since N-Rays had neither theoretical explanation nor theoretical reason to exist, there was only one conclusion to make, and that conclusion did not have to be conditional, tentative, or subject to qualification. Science had confirmed the hypothesis that N-Rays Do Not Exist.<br />
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So it is possible to prove a negative if you can do the following:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Demonstrate the absence of any solid evidence for the thing. Solid evidence means evidence which bears no other explanation and is repeatable. Absence of evidence is very much evidence of absence, in cases where the hypothesis demands such evidence to be found precisely where it is not.</li>
<li>Propose and test alternative explanations for all the evidence that does exist, such as it is. In our story this test consisted of showing that N-Ray detection was unaffected by disabling the apparatus, a state of affairs not concordant with objective phenomena, but perfectly concordant with subjective ones.</li>
<li>Demonstrate that the non-existence of the thing is entirely concordant with all other available data.</li>
</ol>
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Things that definitely do not exist can be proven not to exist if these three hurdles can be cleared. It is not necessary to be <a href="https://aussieshed.blogspot.com/2018/07/santa-clause-agnosticism.html" target="_blank">agnostic</a> about every potentiality and every absurd claim on the basis that "you can't prove a negative." Because quite often, you can.<br />
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Sources:<br />
Klotz, I.M. "The N-Ray Affair," Scientific American, May 1980<br />
Wood, R.W. "The N-Rays," Nature, Sept 1904, 70 (1822): 530–531<br />
<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-62042075441076952592018-07-21T15:10:00.000+08:002018-07-21T19:29:04.856+08:00Examining ObjectivityDescribing statements or reasoning as Subjective means that their validity depends on (is subject to) who is making them. While it may well be objectively true that mushrooms are good food based on analysis of their nutrients, composition, and demonstrated absence of toxicity, it is not a true objective statement to assert that I like mushrooms and I think they are good, taste good, and are nice to eat. Some people can truthfully make that statement, but I cannot. So the truth of that statement is <i>subject to </i>the condition of who is making the statement.<br />
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An objective statement is one that anyone can make without changing its veracity status. Mushrooms often have a rubbery texture. This is demonstrably true whether I say it or someone else does. It is a statement in objective concordance with reality rather than a personal value judgement. If I wanted to defend or explain my disinclination to eat mushrooms, I might appeal to objective facts such as this, followed by an ultimately subjective statement such as, "and I don't like rubbery things to be in my mouth. Bleah."<br />
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Whatever flavor mushrooms may or may not objectively have, to my subjective tastes this alleged flavor does not offset the most unpleasant feeling of rubbery fungus between my teeth. But I am getting a little bit off track I see.<br />
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Objectivity roughly means the ability to reach the same conclusion as anyone else. More precisely it means the ability to reason or reach a specific conclusion that is determined by the outside reality of things rather than predetermined by who you are or where you were born.<br />
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I assert that it is not possible for a religious person to reason objectively about religion. That was certainly true for myself once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away. But why would it be universally true? It's because "My religion is true" and "I like mushrooms" are both subjective statements that only certain people can make, and not objective conclusions that should or even could apply to everybody.<br />
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By definition a religious person believes in or accepts a religious conclusion <i>a priori</i>. When one asks a religious person to reason about a substantive question of religion one finds that there is already a conclusion in place that the person must reach. He is not free to even consider certain possibilities, such as that this religion is false or that a specifically believed religious premise or claim is wrong.<br />
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"But surely," you say, "It is not impossible for an intellectually honest religious person to suspend belief and consider a question objectively." Perhaps, but how would we know if or when that ever happens? More to the point, how would he know? The brain is very adept at concealing intent from itself and forcing reasoning processes into a predetermined outcome, leaving the Reasoner to invent whatever reasons it needs. This is called Motivated Reasoning and it in no way needs to be at a conscious level of awareness or intent. A religious person can be completely unaware of being controlled by motivated reasoning. He might not be at all aware of whatever feats of cognitive gymnastics he had to perform in order to get to the necessary pre-determined conclusion, and can even be cognitively blind to egregious fallacies and errors he may be committing.<br />
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The simple fact is that when someone needs one conclusion to be reached over any other, or is invested personally, emotionally, socially (and yes - often financially) in one outcome over another, that person will not reason objectively, full stop. Even if by some chance that person reaches a valid conclusion, the conclusion and more importantly the process cannot be relied upon. It is unreliable, and therefore wrong even if accidentally valid on occasion.<br />
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It is useless therefore to ask a religious person to reason through questions of, for instance, whether their religion's origin story is factual (historically accurate), or whether testable claims made by the religion are supported by the evidence. Whether gods exist and sometimes modify or directly influence events the physical universe. As James Randi was fond of saying, "Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason." They are playing a fundamentally different game. It may look and sound a bit like reasoning, but it isn't reasoning. It's justifying a belief, also known as Apologetics.<br />
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To which the religious person may reply with turnaround: "Well your atheism is just another belief! You are motivated to believe my God doesn't exist because you need that to be true."<br />
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Bollocks. Boll. Locks.<br />
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Non-belief is just another belief in the same way that OFF is a TV network and not collecting stamps is a hobby. Never playing tennis is a sport. Being dead is a lifestyle. Baldness is a hairstyle. <i>None </i>is a breed of dog one owns as a pet. And accusing me of having "just another belief" is an admission that mere belief is not an intellectually honest or sound position to hold in the first place.<br />
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I neither need a religious premise to be true nor do I need it to be false. But back in the day when I did need a religion to be true and when I was invested in it, it seemed totally true. If it were objectively true, it should still seem at least a little bit true now, even though I no longer need anything it has. However once that link breaks and Motivated Reasoning is no longer operating in one direction <i>or the other</i>, objective conclusions are possible to reach. Reliable conclusions can be reached - not just one-off conclusions, but replicated and documented ones that anyone can get to.<br />
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Do I need there to be no gods because if there were, they would want to punish me? On the contrary. If I thought that, I would be motivated to believe in gods, not to disbelieve. "But you really need there to be no Hell, because you love your sins and you are for sure going there!" No, I certainly am doing no such thing. If I really thought there was such a thing as hell, once again, I would be strongly motivated to defy logic and evidence and believe differently.<br />
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I am not going to try to convince a religious person that I am a good and ethical person worthy of the best of all possible afterlife scenarios. It is an unacceptable powerplay and oppressive control tactic to make people assert their worthiness to the satisfaction of some goddamned self-righteous religious authority, and it ain't gonna happen. But if I needed to, I could prove beyond doubt that I am above ethical reproach by all the major gods or goddesses in most popular storybooks. Except for some of the wackier and capricious rules like weird hairstyles, removed body parts, the wearing of silly hats, or arbitrary cultural constructs like calendar-based numerological and astrological observances. And if the only crime that can be laid at my feet in some sort of post-mortality reality TV show eviction episode is that I did not believe in some bullshit that went against all logic and evidence, then the producers can kiss my big, bare, pasty white ass.<br />
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I would be happy to accept the reality of gods or goddesses provided A) evidence concordant with no other ordinary explanation were produced, and 2) satisfactory explanations for all the evidence against gods were also produced.<br />
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In short, either produce a specimen for examination and/or interrogation, or fuck right off with this 'gods' bullshit and let us hear no more about it.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-74293521511018950522018-07-14T12:11:00.002+08:002018-07-25T01:13:54.471+08:00Santa Claus AgnosticismYou know who really shits me? Smart-arses who smugly proclaim,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Well <i>actually,</i> you can't <i>technically </i>prove Santa Claus doesn't exist, so being agnostic about Santa Claus is the only tenable position to take."</blockquote>
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This is a disingenuous and intellectually lazy position. Such fence-sitters just can't be bothered to understand the evidence behind the <i>fact </i>that there is no Santa Claus; that it is and always was a fiction. I submit that the reason for taking such a patently absurd position is out of fear of offending people who believe in Santa Claus.<br />
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But it gets worse. There are people either so petrified of offending anybody or so lazy that they do not even want to touch the subject that they are lead to say things like,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Nobody should even <i>care </i>whether there is a Santa Claus or not."</blockquote>
Really? <i>Really</i>? The discovery that Santa Claus was actually real would not be the most astonishing, world-changing event in history? The discovery that all of reality, all of history, all of science is now proven to be upside-down, inside out, and just plain wrong? If there's even a chance that Santa Claus was a real being who did what the stories claim he does, do you honestly expect me to believe that you wouldn't want to know this? Well, I don't believe you.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkeVxX_GR2DQuB9YvyoLOv_Gaul9Vxg1IwcNylq1U-ZGnJmav-498wS75oDhAgrPZRsMI4h08OlCTTlq0LNvDsjmDXUY4kIpwJs1QwYHF4W_Nlq55yEjSWnx1AeN_eTc-JstO38OrmGWo/s1600/hqdefault+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="262" data-original-width="397" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkeVxX_GR2DQuB9YvyoLOv_Gaul9Vxg1IwcNylq1U-ZGnJmav-498wS75oDhAgrPZRsMI4h08OlCTTlq0LNvDsjmDXUY4kIpwJs1QwYHF4W_Nlq55yEjSWnx1AeN_eTc-JstO38OrmGWo/s320/hqdefault+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Santa Claus Agnosticism and Santa Claus Apathy are wholly unnecessary positions to take because it can be demonstrated beyond any reasonable person's doubt that there never was any Santa Claus apart from possibly Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century figure of questionable historicity who scarcely resembles the Santa Claus of popular mythology, and who is now widely acknowledged as being dead.<br />
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So how do we know there really is no Santa Claus?<br />
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1. Provenance of source materials. There is no corroborating documentary evidence for Santa Claus apart from a small number of source documents which cannot be regarded as anything other than fictional works. They have always been recognized as fiction, and were never intended to be anything but. Also we can trace the development through history of the myth of Santa Claus, demonstrating that rather than arising from an individual's actual acts, they arose in a syncretic manner through ordinary myth-making processes. Basically, just people making up stories.<br />
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2. Demonstrated physical impossibility. The acts attributed to Santa Claus are provably not things that this universe's physics support or permit. For Santa Claus to be real, physics, biology, chemistry, and even economics would have had to turn out quite differently to how they are actually discovered to be.<br />
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3. Absence. No real Santa Claus has ever been observed, communicated with, met with, photographed, or has ever left any physical or documentary evidence not explainable by entirely mundane non-Santa circumstances. Neither would any real Santa have a legitimate reason for concealing his existence, the existence of elves, flying reindeer, gifts not actually manufactured and delivered by humans, or those three women he's always talking about (rather disparagingly, at that). Absence of evidence precisely where that evidence must be found to support a hypothesis is perfectly valid evidence of absence.<br />
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If you are one of those who crouch behind a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the Scientific Method and Karl Popper's Inductivism and squawk about being agnostic while feeling superior about it, then you, my friend, are Dumb and Wrong. Agnosticism is not a reasonable position to take when there is ample evidence against a proposition and zero evidence for it, regardless of how many people believe in some piece of demonstrable nonsense. No, you are merely afraid of ruffling feathers by offending people's cherished delusions.<br />
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So don't pretend that agnosticism is a superior position to take, and that it is anything other than disingenuous intellectual laziness.<br />
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Good day.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-65171509307351436342018-07-13T19:56:00.000+08:002018-07-14T12:42:19.293+08:00Understanding MathematicsWhat is Mathematics? Everyone has an answer for this; few answers make any sense. Even highly regarded philosophers and scientists answer this question incorrectly, probably because nobody has challenged the explanations, and they have better things to do than sit around worrying about it.<br />
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Daniel Dennett (philosopher) calls mathematics a scientific system attempting to be internally consistent without any direct empirical basis or meaning. He is sadly wrong. Lawrence Krauss (physicist) calls mathematics a kind of philosophy - a tool for thinking about things and working out "what if" sorts of questions. He is slightly less wrong. Wikipedia and most pedagogical sources define Mathematics as a Formal Science, declaring that it is "not concerned with the validity of theories based on observations in the real world, but instead with the properties of formal systems based on definitions and rules." This is also completely wrong. Mathematics is supremely concerned with what statements are objectively, universally true.<br />
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Any number of statements about what Mathematics is or is not have been made: Mathematics is a language. Mathematics is a tool. Mathematics is a game. Mathematics is puzzles. Mathematics is an arbitrary construct. Mathematics is imperialist male-centric in-group signalling. Bla bla bla. All mostly misinformed rubbish. And not only offered by people who never use it or who know nothing about it beyond what they were unable to grasp in high school. People who use mathematics professionally, and even people who consider themselves professional mathematicians, usually have not really thought about what this thing is, why it works, and what it means.<br />
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So what is Mathematics really? Let's break it down. The syntax and notation of mathematics should be considered separately to the facts, discoveries, or conclusions of mathematics. The way we communicate and work with mathematical ideas is an invention that has been developed over hundreds of years. Few people for instance can today understand and work through the mathematical notations of early discoverers like Newton, Euler, Gauss, or Leibniz. Also, different cultures that discovered mathematical facts and principles independently often have mutually unintelligible ways of expressing those facts. Mathematical systems of notation therefore share characteristics of a language: arbitrary, relative to the culture that created it, and not universal or unique.<br />
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And then there's the ideas themselves. The content of mathematics (as divorced from the syntax) are discovered truths about quantities (numbers), the relationships between quantities and groups of quantities, and truths about operations on quantities and the transformation and manipulation of identifiable quantitative objects. These facts, being discoveries and not inventions, are universal. They are also <i>absolute</i>, and not (as many claim) merely <i>relative </i>to a set of assumed axioms. I assert that the basis of mathematics is <i>not axiomatic</i>, but empirical beginning with the empirical existence of integer counting numbers and their properties, and extending to the empirical, discoverable, and absolute properties of idealized geometric objects, spaces, operations, and functions. Once we understand and get over the problem of syntax, it is easier to understand mathematics as the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mathematics is the taxonomy of discovered quantities, quantitative objects, their properties, and of mathematical operations, and the discovered relationships between quantities, operations, and quantitative objects. Mathematics makes use of arbitrary and non-unique invented systems of syntax and notation in order to document and explore this taxonomy.</blockquote>
Mathematical quantities and quantitative objects exist not because we (or any other agency) call them into existence, but because of nothing more than the possibility of the existence of one, two three, or any other number of distinguishable things, be they asteroids, universes, atoms, oranges, or just abstract units or groups of units. And that is a very, very low bar for the existence of anything - so low that one may as well accept that mathematics is as self-existing as anything could be, existing and awaiting only discovery by competent observers.<br />
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Meanwhile the syntax and notation of mathematics are clearly human inventions. They are somewhat arbitrary in that respect, are not unique (i.e. by no means the only possible systems of notation), have regional dialects, and clearly evolve over time. While each system of syntax strives to be internally consistent and unambiguous, they are not always perfect. Syntax, like language, must be learned from other users of the syntax and through determined effort. We develop with effort and practice the facility to interpret and manipulate the syntax and notation of mathematics in order to read, manipulate, or write universal mathematical ideas.<br />
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Syntax and notation allows us to do three things. <br />
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1. Using syntax one can read and interpret a mathematical statement. This may be in the form of defining a stand-alone mathematical object (quantity or group of quantities) or in the form of a statement about a relationship between quantities, usually in the form of an equality relationship involving an operation. Mathematical statements often express information about how aggregate quantities are comprised of or related to other quantities, e.g. by addition or multiplication. The area of a rectangle is the quantity representing the base of the rectangle multiplied by the quantity representing the height. The length of an object in centimeters is related to the length of that object in inches through multiplication by 2.54. These cumbersome statements of fact are abbreviated succinctly using an invented notation: <i>A</i> = <i>B</i>*<i>H</i>; 1 <i>in </i>= 2.54 <i>cm</i>.<br />
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2. Through the use of a suitable syntax we can manipulate mathematical statements to find equivalent statements. The statement "This tree weighs five tonnes," stripped of the ambiguity and possible smarty-pants alternative meanings of a natural language statement, becomes W<span style="font-size: xx-small;">tree</span> = 5 t. As such it can be manipulated to express <i><b>what else</b></i> can be known from this statement alone. This includes the conclusions that two identical such trees would necessarily weigh 10 tonnes together, a tonne is one equal fifth part of this tree, dividing the tree into two parts of equal mass must yield parts of 2.5 t each, and so on. Notice that such manipulations and transformations <i>do not add any new knowledge</i>, but at best re-state the existing knowledge in order to be applicable or relevant to specific questions one may ask. It tells us only what we already know, although sometimes in a way that we did not at first appreciate.<br />
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For example, if we know that the speed of a certain body increases by 32 feet per second each second, it is pretty obvious that after 3 seconds of accelerating from rest, the object must be travelling at a speed of 3 x 32 = 96 feet/sec. This we know by mere extension or re-statement of the premise. No new information is required. But far less obvious is the fact that after 3 seconds it must also necessarily be 144 feet away. This non-obvious fact is not new information; it is actually contained within the premise. It only becomes obvious when the statement, expressed in mathematical syntax, undergoes valid syntactical transformations and manipulations leading to other entirely equivalent statements which we can then interpret. This is not generally possible with natural-language statements.<br />
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Mathematical manipulations of the syntactical expression of a statement accepted as true, done in such a way that each re-statement is also true, permit us to uncover many other true statements implied or required by the original one. It may be the case however that not all possible true statements about the premise can be discovered. The only guarantee is that if each manipulation is valid, the result is a true re-statement of the premise.<br />
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3. We can express mathematical ideas including asking questions about quantities and testing hypotheses about the relationships between mathematical objects. A mathematical object is sometimes literally an object like a line, a triangle, or a sphere, but more generally it is an identifiable collection of numbers, often which have a simple rule for determining which numbers belong to the object. Sometimes the numbers have to be in a specific order; sometimes it is something simple like "all numbers less than five."<br />
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For example, one may ask in natural language, "Which is the larger of the two - the area of a circle of diameter equal to one Glaaarrghtoot (aka a Glaaarrghsnaffian Inchmeter - 1/100,000 the mean circumference of Planet Glaaarrghsnaffia VII), or the area of a triangle, each side of which is also exactly one Glaaarrghtoot?" And while philosophers and theologians unconstrained by knowledge endlessly dispute the meaning of words like "circle," "diameter," "triangle," "planet," and "equal," and while engineers Space-Google the mean circumference of G. VII in Spaceyards, we can cut right to the chase using mathematical syntax:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-9ca565d3-9326-22e9-3774-2e4eaba72a5f"><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">√3 >? 𝜋</span></span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In this form the question is readily and unambiguously answered: the circle has the larger area, on any planet or on no planet at all; in any universe or in no universe at all. However, as you may have noticed, finding the answer was not possible by syntax alone, but is also inextricably linked to the meaning of mathematical objects such as "3" and "<span style="font-family: "arial"; white-space: pre-wrap;">𝜋," </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and by the existence of operations such as the square-root. So we leave syntax aside for now with the understanding that while itself an invention, the things syntax expresses are not inventions but discoveries.</span></span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Mathematical discoveries include all numbers; groups of numbers; </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">relationships</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> between numbers; mathematical objects including geometric shapes, functions, and other identifiable groupings of quantities; operations that transform numbers, groups of numbers and objects; and relationships between mathematical objects.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">These discoveries begin with the discovery of 1. The unit. A thing. Any single thing. Then along comes another thing, and we immediately discover 2. Two things. The idea of two. Two of something. Also, we make the discovery that one and one is two; or that two ones is two, two divided equally into two is one, and one removed from two is once again one. In our notation, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">1 + 1 = 2</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">1 x 2 = 2</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">2 / 2 = 1</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">2 - 1 = 1</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">By careful observation of two units both together and apart, we have also thus <i>discovered </i>(not <i>invented</i>) the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Then we discover 3, 4, 5, and all the other cardinal numbers, and a myriad of facts about the relationships between them. We discover even numbers, odd numbers, square numbers, prime numbers, factors, divisors, etc in endless variety.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">We can also discover without any further assumptions (or axioms) whatsoever the existence of an infinity of numbers between the cardinal (integer) numbers, as well as negative numbers. These non-obvious numbers are called into existence by the very existence of the operations we discovered at the start. Because Division empirically exists (you can divide objects or collections of things and count the results), non-integer numbers must therefore also exist. Five must ultimately be capable of being divided by two, for instance. Because Subtraction is a thing, negative numbers must therefore also be a thing. You can have an actual deficit of frogs - negative frogs - if someone owes you a frog. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Because an endless series of dividing whole numbers have no reason not to exist, irrational numbers (not expressible by any finite number of divisions of whole numbers) likewise are permitted to exist, and it can be shown that they do. Even less obviously, if multiplication is to be a logically self-consistent thing that exists, "imaginary" numbers must also exist - numbers which when multiplied together produce negative numbers, which we already know exist.</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Besides quantities</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">, there are endless other kinds of mathematical objects to be discovered: the point, the line, the plane, points on a plane, geometric shapes on the plane as identifiable groups of related points, n-dimensional spaces, and n-dimensional geometric objects. There are functions in endless variety: groups of numbers that are related to each other through a sequence of operations. y = 5x. y = sine(2x). All just awaiting discovery, and the discovery of their numerous obvious and not-so-obvious interrelationships. New techniques and better systems of syntax often need to be invented in order to more easily work with more complicated discovered objects.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">But you may say all these "empirical" </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">discoveries</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> are merely of abstract ideals, not objects of physical existence. What is the </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">connection</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> then to the physical universe? Why do so many natural phenomena lend themselves so well to mathematical </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">descriptions</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">? What is the nature of the strange link between the real world and the <i>purely abstract</i> world of mathematics? </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">We need to walk back some of the question-begging smuggled in with these questions. Firstly, it is in no way "purely abstract" to observe that discrete items in the physical universe correspond to the cardinal numbers one discovers in mathematics. This is, indeed, how the cardinal numbers were originally discovered. One rock. Two rocks. Another makes three. One bear. Two bears. Holy shit - run for your lives! In no way is this purely abstract or hypothetical. One gallon - two gallons - not to mention the practically unlimited divisibility of gallons of liquids into smaller non-integer quantities. Mathematics is simply not the abstraction that so many have claimed it was.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Natural phenomena and the mathematics that describe them are likewise not the separate entities that the above questions presuppose, either. We discover natural phenomena at about the same time we discover the mathematics that describes them precisely because they are often one and the same. The inverse square law of physical phenomena such as gravity, radiation, </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">luminescence</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">, electric fields etc are not eerily mathematical due to some kind of conspiracy or fine tuning, or some deep mystery of surprising profundity, nor is the mathematics "<i>just a model of reality</i>." Rather, all these physical laws are nothing more than re-statements of the rather mundane mathematical truth discovery that the surface of any sphere increases as the square of its radius. Exponential radioactive decay and the law of half-lives is not atoms being artificially forced to obey an invented mathematical abstraction by some mysterious conspiracy; instead it is merely an instance of probability (another mathematical discovery) happening to large numbers of objects, not abstractly, but </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">in real life</span><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It is not at all mysterious, nor should it be, that mathematics works so well in the natural and applied sciences, any more than it should be confusing that one rock and another rock makes . . . two rocks. It is a basic truth about things in the universe that they represent and are represented by numbers. Numbers have relationships that we can discover, and those relationships are again reflected in the real objects in the universe that embody these numbers, as a direct consequence of embodying those numbers. What's interesting is that while numbers are readily embodied by physical objects, they can also be embodied by abstractions. Numbers don't even need a universe in order to exist.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The historical development of mathematics is a confused story of simultaneously discovering mathematical objects while struggling to invent ways of talking about them. These are often <i>ad ho</i>c shortenings of natural language descriptions that evolved into some kind of operative syntax. This can easily account for why it is not obvious to more people - even mathematicians - that mathematics is really two very different things bound together: a taxonomy of discovered universal truths about quantities, and </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">an invented arbitrary system of syntax needed to talk about them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-83277783203070993922018-05-24T17:58:00.002+08:002018-07-14T12:53:33.617+08:00Addressing Some Questions About DeterminismA while back I wrote <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/free-will-versus-determinism.html" target="_blank">three</a> <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/follow-up-on-determinism-its-still-fake.html" target="_blank">posts</a> in a <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/follow-up-on-follow-up-on-fake-deter.html" target="_blank">row</a> about why Determinism in the physical sense is not actually a real thing in the real universe and is not a consequence of physical law. The initial conditions of the universe do not fully determine all future states of the universe, and in particular do not determine all future actions of organic multi-cellular agents. Such actions may be and often are determined in a sense, or perhaps more accurately predisposed, but not by the universe's initial conditions. The actions of a dog may be constrained by instinct, conditioning, interactions with other dogs, reactions to random (stochastic) events such as lightning or earthquakes, or done just because the dog felt like it. The universe's initial conditions certainly had nothing to do with it. Nor was the appearance of dogs on a tiny planet orbiting a tiny star in one of billions of ordinary galaxies predetermined. The exact sequence of events that lead to that particular dog existing was in no way inevitable, although one may claim inevitability that some form of life evolved somewhere at some time, given enough of it.<br />
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My refutation of physical Determinism requires a certain proficiency in Physics to understand. That may be inevitable as well, but I would like to add some Explainy Words to the body of work that may help fellow physicists as well as, like, musicians and such, to grasp the idea of our Non-Deterministic Universe. How can a Universe entirely operating on natural physical laws be non-deterministic?<br />
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This must be framed by an understanding of what people mean when they say Determinism. The physical meaning of physical Determinism is that all future states are "locked in" by the combination of the physical laws which 100% control the evolution of the universe from one state to the next, and the initial conditions from which the universe starts off. Many will focus only on the fact that the evolution of states is 100% determined by the physical laws (which we call <i>physics</i>) and set aside the important role of the initial conditions or the starting point, or even the precise nature of the physics that controls the operation of the universe. While the fact of the universe evolving or functioning entirely according to physics is not called into question except by Deists,Theists, or other proponents of willful ignorance, this sense of Determinism does not do what its claimants suppose: it does not fix as inevitable all future states of the universe or all future events. I show that future states are not necessarily fully determined by previous states even when the evolution of states is entirely governed by physics. I also show that initial states can and often are sufficiently ambiguous to allow future states to be not inevitable even when arrived at by entirely natural physical processes.<br />
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At the most basic level that we are yet to understand, the universe possess a Quantum Mechanical physics. Quantum Mechanics is an explicitly non-deterministic kind of physics. Hell, even ordinary cause-and-effect struggles to assert itself in the Quantum regime. That is the universe at the lowest, most basic level we know so far. The nature of Quantum Physics is that future states while determined by physics are not fully determined by initial conditions, and any given evolution of states is not foreordained by initial conditions even though the laws of Quantum Physics are always fully complied with. But this is not even remotely the end of the story.<br />
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When a system of Quantum particles increases sufficiently in number, Classical or Newtonian Physics emerges as a result. Let me repeat that: Classical Physics emerges from Quantum Mechanics when you add enough interacting parts. A Classical body emerges from putting together a sufficiently large (maybe 10,000) quantum objects in a semi-bound state, such as a baseball or a tiny pebble. Classical bodies obey classical physics including all of Newton's Laws, Hooke's Law, Electromagnetism, and Gravity. All of this emerges from or arises from Quantum Mechanics, a fully non-deterministic physics.<br />
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Classical Physics applied to a small number of Classical Bodies in a simple system over a Reasonable time period exhibits some properties of Determinism. Determinism is an emergent and temporary property of Classical Physics, which is emergent from non-deterministic Quantum Physics. What is a simple system and a reasonable time period? By simple I mean that the number of interactions is about the same order of magnitude as the number of bodies. In other words we do not see every body interacting with every other body and hence an exponentially larger number of interactions than bodies. Reasonable time is the time it takes for there to be about the same order of magnitude of interactions as there are bodies. Beyond that, this newly emerged Determinism starts to break down because of its intrinsic sensitivity to initial conditions and the number of interactions which tend to magnify ambiguity as the number of interactions increases.<br />
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When the system is not so simple and/or the time becomes unreasonably long, a new physics begins to emerge: Chaos. Chaotic physics emerges or arises from Classical Physics and Classical bodies when the sensitivity to initial conditions becomes so great that only infinitely determined initial conditions could constrain all future states of the system. Without infinitely determined initial states, Chaotic Physics becomes Non-Deterministic: the Non-Determinism has emerged from the increasing complexity of the deterministic Classical system. Notice we do not have infinity precision of initial conditions at any time anywhere. Remember, Classical bodies and Classical Physics emerged from Quantum Physics, which is non-deterministic and ambiguous with respect to the exact state of every particle. It is not the case that the states exist but are unknown; it is more the case that an infinitely unambiguous initial state did not exist in reality.<br />
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But we're not done yet. As Classical bodies get smaller and greater in number, yet another new Physics emerges: Thermodynamics or Statistical Physics. This physics is again inherently stochastic and non-deterministic. Specific internal states of Thermodynamic Systems are not determined by initial conditions for the reasons I explained in the <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/follow-up-on-follow-up-on-fake-deter.html" target="_blank">post</a> on that topic. Due to thermodynamic irreversibility (aka entropy increase) information about previous states is irretrievably lost and those exact states no longer play any role in determining future states or the evolution of the system. Again, from conditionally deterministic Classical Physics emerges a new non-deterministic physics, and the universe is back to being Non-Deterministic again.<br />
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To summarize, the Determinism that people are familiar with is only an emergent property of a limited range of physical phenomenon which itself emerges from more fundamental and fundamentally non-deterministic physics. This limited Determinism dissolves back into non-determinism as soon as the scope of physical phenomena is further expanded. Only certain Goldilocks conditions can give rise to a temporary illusion of physical Determinism in our universe.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-25303834483776683092018-05-14T17:37:00.001+08:002018-08-11T11:14:44.368+08:00Is it Mental Illness, or is it Make Believe?Unlike some atheists, I do not think that religious delusions are an actual mental illness. This frequently-encountered claim comes from a reading of the DSM-IV (or is it up to V now?) which defines a delusional mental illness in exactly the language that describes religious fervor, but then makes an unjustified <i>ad-hoc</i> special exclusion for "religious" delusions. And they define "religion" as ... well, they don't. You just know it when you see it.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_(jm3).png/1024px-The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_(jm3).png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="800" height="317" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_(jm3).png/1024px-The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_(jm3).png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from Wikipedia, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases" target="_blank">"List of Cognitive Biases"</a></td></tr>
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But to claim that ordinary misinformed delusions including religion are a mental disorder carries a tacit assumption that the human brain is somehow a perfect cognition machine and could only be wrong when defective. This assumes the brain was created perfect, or has evolved to perfection. When exposed, this assumption is obviously dumb. The human brain (and body) is so obviously anything but perfect in the healthy natural state.<br />
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Cognitive biases and built-in fallacies in the natural way a healthy human brain functions are more than enough to account for religious experience. We have the Bias of Agency which makes the brain assume something it doesn't understand is evidence of some agent acting in the environment. We have Confirmation Bias which makes confirmatory evidence apparent and suppresses disconfirmatory evidence. We have Motivated Reasoning in which something we need to be true in order to avoid unpleasant emotions or social isolation can quite readily be made to seem fully true by the brain. These are all things that a healthy, normal brain does.<br />
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Overcoming these natural thinking defects requires an overlay of artificial thinking tools that Nature has not provided us with, but which humans have invented, passed on, and perfected over the last 10,000 years in particular, and which we now use to be better thinkers. We can, when trained, identify, avoid, correct, and overcome fallacious reasoning, cognitive biases, emotional biases, and social motivations that favour a dodgy conclusion over a correct one.<br />
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But it is quite unpopular in the PC Age to suggest that some mental disorders are the sufferer's own fault - that they may be the result of an incorrect utilization of the brain by the brain's owner. My experience is precisely that - practically all of my own neuroses (anguish, self-destructive tendencies and suffering) and some of my psychoses (clinical pathologies e.g. depression) are the result of me using my brain in dumb ways, and correct themselves when I can be bothered to use my brain in smart ways.<br />
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However there has been clinical evidence found that serious mental disorders are more prevalent among the fervently religious. Unknown is whether this is causal (religion messes up people's brains and lives), contra-causal (pre-existing mental illness attracts people to religion), both, or just a coincidence. It would be helpful if religions in their position of privilege and platform would actually teach people effective ways to manage common disorders such as depression, anxiety, addictive/compulsive behaviours, etc. But they offer mere placebos instead, and I think they don't even want to know anything about how the brain really works lest their fragile mythology about humans come into question.<br />
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In order to fix problems of mind, like fixing problems in a car, it is absolutely prerequisite to understand how the thing operates. We must accept the brain as a physical machine and not as a magical conduit to/from a perfect infallible agency. Think for even a moment about the concept of "sin." If the Free Agent Ghost Hypothesis were correct, there would not be such a thing as sin, because the ghost would have the agency to decide not to sin. But we see daily examples of devoutly religious people sinning repeatedly, and they don't know why. "Oh the devil is tempting them!" Well then do we have free agency or don't we? No - observed human behaviour does not support the ghost hypothesis. Only the brain as a conditioned environmental modeling survival machine fits the data.<br />
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When I learned how to operate the brain, I discovered free agency for the first time and "sin" in my life as a devoutly religious man simply vanished. Shortly thereafter, without sin I found I no longer experienced guilt. Without guilt, religion was somehow just not as important as it used to be. When I didn't need religion to be true anymore, both socially and personally, the motivated reasoning fell, and within weeks the apparent logical cohesion of my religious beliefs had vanished into thin air, exposing the many negative and harmful aspects of it as well as all the logical inconsistencies and factual inaccuracies of it. Without religion, being a happy, good, and decent person is easier than ever and life has far more meaning and wonder. But religions teach that people like me are sinful and are lying about not believing in order to not face my sins. Religion does itself no favour by employing such demonstrably, provably dishonest troll tactics.<br />
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Does it matter to me that everybody who was ever a part of my life and who is still religious assumes I must be engaged in some vile sinful acts as the only possible explanation for why I am no longer religious? I could experience that feeling if I wanted to, but I choose not to use my brain in that way. Got better things to do with my neurons.John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-24163115083743229672018-05-10T21:24:00.001+08:002018-07-22T11:11:28.108+08:00The Best Arguments for GodsAre these the best arguments for the existence of gods? If so, then the case for gods and goddesses is looking pretty bleak, to be honest. These are the best arguments, such as they are, that I encounter from time to time from those who are determined to rescue my soul, and I have to say I am rather underwhelmed by their quality and persuasiveness. I am fairly disappointed at how evidently ambivalent people are about the welfare of my soul, if these arguments are any reflection.<br />
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Keep in mind that an Argument is not Evidence. It is merely the line that connects evidence to a conclusion. The biggest problem with most arguments in support of the existence of gods and goddesses is that even if the arguments were not fallacious or disjointed they still do not actually link back to or produce any good evidence. But we will be lenient today and allow the advocates of gods to give me their best shots. Let 'er rip!<br />
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<b>"The Bible says so."</b> Many people when asked why they think gods exist will immediately turn to scriptural authority. Why I am unmoved by this argument stems from the fact that by this logic we should also believe in Spiderman. And why stop there: we should all be worshiping Gandalf, Frodo, and Bellatrix LeStrange too, if we admit this line of reasoning.<br />
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Flippancy aside, we are compelled to examine biblical authority more closely to determine if there is any reason whatsoever to take it seriously. The evidence we have for biblical origins and authorship, both from contemporaneous independent historical records, from textual analysis of source documents and related historical documents, and from artifacts and physical archaeology is that many of the individual "books" of the bible are straight-up forgeries which are not at all what they pretend to be. A few books are genuine and sincere stand-alone religious texts, but such things are not unique in the world and certainly not unique to the abrahamic gods. More than enough of the bible is outright fraud to compel us in all honesty to reject the content as a whole as having a supernatural origin. There is every reason to regard the bible as fraudulent, and no reason to take it seriously or at face value. It should be read and studied as the historical fabrication that it is.<br />
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Genesis and Exodus for example are not at all contemporaneous to the supposed events they portray, but instead date to about 450 BC. Archaeology and contemporaneous historical documents and artifacts positively prove that the events described therein <i>never occurred</i> and the main characters were very definitely not historical figures. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua etc. were all just stories someone made up, often by plagiarizing much older fictional tales from different contexts entirely.<br />
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The New Testament is even worse: while there likely was a real Paul who helped unite a cluster of mystery sects in about 50 AD, about half of the Pauline Epistles found in today's bible are widely acknowledged as later forgeries, likely composed in order to strengthen one particular sect's claim to hegemony. The Gospels date from at least 70 AD, and are contradicted by contemporaneous accounts, borrow from and rewrite each other, and belong to a genre of acknowledged fictionalized pretend histories of purely mythical figures. They are not recorded oral histories but carefully crafted allegories fashioned by anonymous writers familiar with Greek literary devices, tropes, and constructs, but strangely unfamiliar with the language, peoples, religions, and customs of Palestine. By examining the bible, I am persuaded that Jesus Christ was an entirely mythical construct based on the older Angel Joshua of Judaism, and never an actual living historical person. So, in other words, no. The bible is provably factually wrong in countless instances, is very clearly and obviously a man-made and ever-evolving fiction, and does not authoritatively prove that there ever were any gods at all, any more than comic books prove there is a Spiderman.<br />
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<b>"People don't know how to be Moral until God decrees what is and is not Moral."</b> They call this the argument from Objective Morality, but it is neither objective nor moral. What the believers in gods have is an <i>arbitrary </i>morality that is fundamentally immoral, <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/religion-against-humanity.html" target="_blank">as I explain here</a> and again <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2017/08/failure-to-communicate.html" target="_blank">here</a>. The idea that morality and ethical behaviour in humans and human societies is entirely attributable to the existence of gods is a bad argument for gods precisely because it is false. Godless humans and human societies somehow find their way to ethical standards of behaviour that often exceed those of religious societies. Hell, even packs of chimpanzees and dogs have a basic moral sense that guides their behaviour. You can't tell me they got that by reading the bible.<br />
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So let's look at that bible one more time. The various gods described in the bible beginning with a minor actor in the Caananite pantheon of gods and goddesses are savage, sadistic, primitive assholes whom no one today would describe as "moral." The jealous, overly-sensitive volcano god Yahweh seems to have a real inferiority complex and keeps trying to convince everyone through his bloodthirsty rage that he's the greatest of all the many, many gods. And we're supposed to learn morality from <i>that</i>? Later gods (or possibly the same god slightly grown-up) seem to care a little too deeply about provincial politics and is more than happy to spend the death and suffering of his people for short-term political or territorial gains. Look, no thinking person takes the bible seriously, and if you actually read the thing you wouldn't be spouting off about how "moral" the utterly barbaric bible is.<br />
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Religious societies are more likely to abuse the human rights of its citizens, especially of women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, political minorities, and sexual minorities (e.g. transgender people, homosexuals, etc). How do they justify the objectively immoral inflicting of suffering and abuse on the powerless? Religion and the ridiculous arbitrary behavioural code they have confused with and substituted for actual morality.<br />
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The comeback argument usually sounds something like "If people didn't think there would be an ultimate justice, they wouldn't be afraid of doing whatever they wanted all the time - steal, kill, rape, and be atheist." Really? What "people" is that you're talking about? Normal people don't need to be threatened with hell in order to want to do the right thing and create through their own acts the sort of world they'd like to live in. If the fear of eternal torture in hell and a watchful, vengeful god is all that is keeping you from doing horrible things to your fellow humans, then what you are is a psychopath and I hope you never stop believing in hell.<br />
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<b>"The Universe had to start somehow, and it could only be Gods."</b> Couldn't it though? That is a bold assertion to make without evidence. Why could not the universe posses entirely natural causes, origins, and workings? Everything we know about this universe so far, after just a few centuries of serious investigation, is that it is entirely naturalistic and requires no universal intelligent agency or supernatural finnanglings in order to function as it does. We also understand (or should - see my earlier series of posts <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/free-will-versus-determinism.html" target="_blank">beginning with this one</a>) that the universe is not fully deterministic. This fact ruins the deistic fancy that some god or goddess magically poofed the universe into existence for some obtuse purpose and then stood back and allowed it to carry on naturally in the fulfillment of a divine master-plan. That plan would only work if the universe and nature were indeed fully deterministic. But it is not, and your gods and goddesses would be compelled to constantly tweak and nudge the universe in its random wanderings back onto the divinely specified trajectory. We explicitly see this exact thing not happening, as well as the positive absence of a mechanism by which this could happen from outside the universe. The only agency observed to marginally influence the course of Nature is that of Man, and that of a few other animals on this planet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6bhbhF8YzBzx1Ufp92RiVXFLre40PzZseuwMy61idF3rUD0x-zbJmnex9BGjHhMprcxkGxqHwg2x4tamJrdC1q9p58H8BMg3qprl7JCDQnmmtcNB-RCdv1Z8iCtN0nXo7wil2OfvINCI/s1600/DSC_0547+%2528800x638%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="800" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6bhbhF8YzBzx1Ufp92RiVXFLre40PzZseuwMy61idF3rUD0x-zbJmnex9BGjHhMprcxkGxqHwg2x4tamJrdC1q9p58H8BMg3qprl7JCDQnmmtcNB-RCdv1Z8iCtN0nXo7wil2OfvINCI/s200/DSC_0547+%2528800x638%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a>If you see a symmetric web hanging with dew in the morning, only determined willful ignorance could license you to assume it was the act of some supernatural agency. Even a rustic innocent understands that it was the work of a spider, an animal fully competent to carry out such modifications to the environment. Sometimes designs have a designer, and sometimes designs emerge without one.<br />
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But the most damning flaw of this bad argument for gods, that everything that exists could only exist if it had an intelligent agent as its prime instigator, is this very argument itself. If we were to foolishly be persuaded by this baseless assertion, accept it as valid and apply it evenly, then we would be in the awkward position of having to respond to the objection that if Gods exist, someone or something must have created them.<br />
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<b>"Logic and Reason can only exist as a result of the Gods inventing them."</b> Oh for fuck's sake, not this puddle of donkey cack. Really? Have you never even seen a logic or a reason, much less used one? OK - I may have to break it down to toddler level for the fundamentalists out there who are fond of this nonsense garbage argument and who (by straining hard enough) somehow find it persuasive. But first it seems necessary to seize the narrative and talk about one of my favorite subjects - Mathematics. Math means Quantitative Reasoning and encompasses the fields of Logic and Geometry. Math is essentially the taxonomy of the properties of quantities and functions (identifiable groups of quantities, e.g. the points on an idealized circle or sphere). The claim is that these properties and their relationships could somehow only exist if an invisible wizard casts a magic spell or something. Could they really not exist simply on their own?<br />
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But to be fair, let us allow the question and conjecture an entirely godless universe - I know, rather inconceivable, but bear with me. Suppose this utterly god-free universe contained an asteroid. And then suppose there was a second asteroid, one that was not merely the first one all over again. Now if we, who are not present (because this is a godless universe, remember) and thus cannot see this, but instead merely speculate that these asteroids exist, proceed to count the number of separate asteroids in the universe, do we not arrive at the result, being one asteroid plus another asteroid? Do we not empirically see what we shall designate as Two asteroids? Even in a godless universe one plus one makes two, an empirical fact which requires no proof, nor derivation from <i>a priori</i> axioms, nor magic, nor divine imprimatur. Now let us imagine as a thought-experiment that the two asteroids crash into one another and each breaks into two pieces. Is it not an empirical fact that if this<br />
were to happen, then the asteroids now number two times two, and also two plus two, namely four? What this demonstrates is that it is entirely possible for math to exist of its own accord, waiting only to be discovered by an animal at least as competent at counting as a Labrador Retriever.<br />
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Math (and by extension Logic and Reason) is not an invention, but a discovery. While mathematical notations and methodologies are certainly invented, the properties and relationships of quantities and functions themselves can only be discovered. While whiny post-modernists hipsters in their bourgeois parlors playing middle-class word games reassure themselves that math is just a subjective eurocentric cis-male construct, in the real world math exists whether we know about it or not, or are capable of using it or not. A circle's circumference of unit diameter was 3.14159... long before pi was known to humans, and long before an oblate spheroid planet following a precessing elliptical orbit around an unremarkable sun formed on which people would eventually understand any of this. The surface of a sphere has ever increased as the square of the radius, and the volume as the cube, even before the first stars and galaxies formed and light shone in concordance with these facts, and would have done so whether gods existed or not. <br />
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Attributing the existence of logic and reason solely to either the existence of magical invisible sky people or to human culture is equally willfully ignorant of the true nature of any of those things. In small words: this argument is bad, silly, and dumb. It does not work.<br />
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<b>"The orderly universe is finely tuned to support human life and this proves that some Gods probably did it."</b> Ah the Fine Tuning argument. This one backfires on the godologists rather spectacularly, which is why I quite enjoy getting this one. Consider first the orderliness of nature - the sun rising, the tides and seasons coming and going in regular succession as though rehearsed by a master-orchestrator, the exact conditions by which we experience life, and so on. This is sometimes floated as a separate, standalone argument. Setting aside the fact that at large timescales the universe is nowhere near as orderly and predictable as this argument requires, this was once a compelling reason to suspect there may be gods about. It was certainly one possible explanation for things, once upon a time. Which gods, though ...? That was always an open question. But the fact that things were a little too orderly and predictable, like clockwork, should have been a clue that perhaps this was not an agency at work, but the result of some mechanistic system, like a clockwork.<br />
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However that all changed the moment we learned how gravity works and that all of this orbiting stuff is exactly what can and would occur whether gods existed or not; whether they intervened or not. Astronomy including the true nature of the earth, sun, planets, stars, and other bodies detectable in the heavens are all understood well enough now that the presumption of some supernatural agency keeping it all going is no longer justified on this basis, and is indeed laughably unfounded. This universe works exactly the way a completely god-free universe would work, and not at all the way a god-controlled universe should work, according to all the things godologists certify about their gods.<br />
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OK so the universe is doing nothing other than following physical laws. But how do we know some gods didn't decree those very laws? How is it not fine-tuned just for us? Nope - sorry, you're indulging in a "begging the question" fallacy, so let's step back from some of those built-in assumptions. This universe is not necessarily fine tuned just for us - it may be an accident that we are here discussing this universe at all. It may seem perfect for us, but is there any other way we could possibly be having this discussion? I know how difficult it can be to understand the logic this objection, having once been strongly motivated to see it as good evidence for gods. But bear with me: If we accept that Life in our present form requires some very fortuitous initial conditions and some lucky breaks along the way, then by even having this discussion we presume that those conditions are factual. It may not actually be the case that we or something like us could only be here under these exact conditions, but we'll allow this for the present. So, what are the odds? One in ... five? How many planets and solar systems are out there that are just right for life? How many universes are there or have there been? We do not actually know, and so we cannot assert that this one is too improbable to have happened by chance. So we are left with this: it either happened by chance, or by some natural cause which somehow favors these conditions, or by the design of some powerful supernatural agency. The mere fact that we are here wondering which one it is neither presupposes nor precludes any one of these three possibilities, because these are the only conditions under which we could be wondering this in the first place.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG9ZEPTzM3x3gaPqb1_bGjSYOMEPWVbnWVLNTS-hdmVc1huVo5_KDMCTKUFoDdXa2ilMqAsKN1SdKN2o10mPkbgDuoWu02NMvhe3Gp64RokHW-YvmBL1PCXgEH0PkyLVs3wq8Ev-Uq0sw/s1600/Stephen-Hawking-Space-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="308" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG9ZEPTzM3x3gaPqb1_bGjSYOMEPWVbnWVLNTS-hdmVc1huVo5_KDMCTKUFoDdXa2ilMqAsKN1SdKN2o10mPkbgDuoWu02NMvhe3Gp64RokHW-YvmBL1PCXgEH0PkyLVs3wq8Ev-Uq0sw/s200/Stephen-Hawking-Space-1.jpg" width="200" /></a>If this universe is exquisitely fine tuned to favor anything, it favors (as we physicists now know) the production of as many Black Holes as possible. But, however, there may be natural, physical reasons for this which we may learn eventually, so we are not justified in assuming the existence of some Black Hole God who crafted this universe purely based on His Holeyness' preferences. So don't go throwing out all your action figures of a guy being murdered to death on a big "t" and replacing them with photos of Stephen Hawking, which is what the Fine Tuning argument would require if you were to absolutely insist upon its validity.<br />
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<b>"Human beings and human societies are self-evidently the result of divine creation."</b> Again, at one time in the past this might have been a compelling reason to suspect the existence of some invisible magic man with a plan. Even if one accepts divine creation as the best explanation, there is still an awfully long way to go before any one particular god or religion can be awarded the credit for it. But even in the pre-scientific age there were reasons to doubt this claim. A lot of outlandish and <i>ad hoc</i> explanations had to be invented over time in order to account for facts about humans and their societies that did not fit the "gods did it" hypothesis.<br />
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Of course today there are well-tested and compelling hypotheses that account for everything we see in humanity without invoking the supernatural. I will not present or argue here the oceans of evidence that support the fact and theory of human evolution, the indisputable facts from molecular biology that place <i>homo sapiens sapiens </i>squarely in the animal kingdom right in among the chimpanzees, the fact that nothing about humans is qualitatively outside the range of animal behaviour or competence, but only quantitative extensions of animal behaviour. The God Squad claims that gods are the only explanation for the existence of us. To address that claim, all that is needed is one viable alternative theory that withstands every determined attempt at falsification. I do not have to positively prove that the alternative explanation is true; I only have to point out that it exists and is not contradicted by any evidence we have in order to dismiss the claim that only gods could have done it. It is demonstrably false that <i>only </i>some gods could have done it. While perhaps gods might have done it, this is definitely not the only explanation, nor even the best explanation.<br />
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There is clear and unequivocal evidence - vast quantities of myopically coherent evidence - that humans and all other living things were not created in their present forms, but have evolved. Therefore any explanation about the origins of life must account for the proven fact of past and present evolution of life to be considered at all. Could gods have utilized evolution to manufacture us? If they did, we must assume they are comfortable - sanguine even - with the evolutionary imperfections, useless vestigial structures, and mental and physical weaknesses and vulnerabilities of our species, as well as patient with the millions of years of pre-human primates and at least a hundred thousand years of modern but pre-monotheistic human beings. It is not at all self-evident that some gods did this for any coherent purpose, and the gods hypothesis is very far from the best explanation while lacking any explanatory or predictive power. In terms of testability, the creationist hypothesis fails again and again - fails to find evidence of intentional design, and fails to account for very un-design-like phenomena in biology.<br />
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A once-compelling subset of this argument is the argument of the human Self and conscious self-awareness. For a long time it could not be understood how the thing we all experience could possibly emerge naturally from a wet and springy 1300-g blob of 90 billion neurons. However this bastion of magic has fallen in the path of Science. Consciousness is no longer an unassailable mystery but is even now being unraveled and explored as an entirely natural phenomenon. I often did and still sometimes do boggle at the fact of finding myself existing as a conscious being. How did this happen? Why am I me? However there are now some very plausible, testable, and continually improving hypotheses about how the brain as a machine produces conscious experience and the illusion of a Self that do not involve, invoke, or rely on theology or the supernatural in any way.<br />
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<b>"There was this one guy who was sick, and then he wasn't sick anymore, and so ... Ta Da! Gods!"</b> The argument from miracles is difficult to deal with because the claims are slippery. The evidence of the actual events diffuse conveniently into obscurity, or the tale spins out to ever more fanciful variants. Unexplained occurrences or healings are simply that: unexplained. To make a Deistic much less a Theistic claim on this basis requires that you first produce incontrovertible evidence that the event actually took place, and then show precisely how all alternative ordinary explanations fail. Then you have to show evidence of the proffered explanation - that some particular god and no other did it. In most cases this is merely assumed.<br />
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But most of the miracle stories out there have serious authenticity problems. It is possible to show in some cases that the event could never have occurred, and that key facts are contradicted by independent evidence. In other cases it is simply impossible to verify any of the details. And in the small number of verified, documented occurrences, there are easily other less marvelous, sadly banal, and vastly more probable explanations.<br />
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There will always be the unexplained in this world, however. Just keep in mind that unexplained is merely unexplained - it no more justifies belief in gods than it justifies belief in Harry Potter.<br />
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<b>"Life does not have any meaning without gods; so therefore the obvious fact that life <i>must </i>have meaning proves that gods exist."</b> Hey! great begging-the-question fallacy. Well done. But I have to ask, why <i>must </i>life have meaning? How do you know that is an incontrovertible fact? Or do you merely need it to be so? Let's look at this another way. You need life to have meaning. You make up gods and you invent fancy stories that you tell yourself that puts human life in a cosmic context that makes it seem bigger and more important and lasting. You make up a story in which this short existence is an epic critically important quest or test with infinitely bigly consequences. And it feels really good. But guess what - you did that. You gave your life meaning. You did it even though gods don't really exist and the stories aren't actually true, but there you are. You have a meaningful life. So why couldn't the story be something else closer to actual reality? Your religion's very existence proves that it is possible for us to give our own lives meaning by ourselves. That power is ours and does not require gods to be real.<br />
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"No! No good - if it isn't actually true then it's meaningless. God gives my life meaning only because he actually exists for real!" Ah - but gods do not exist and this fact does not stop people from feeling that their lives are meaningful. However I take your meaning, and acknowledge that this route to meaning would not work if people knew it was fake. What then do you do when you find out that it is? Give up on life because that was the only possible meaning it could have had? No. It is possible to give your life a meaning that is more based on fact and reality. But no one can do that for you. Step One is to learn more facts. A<i> lot </i>more facts. <br />
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<b>"I personally felt a feeling, saw a thing, &/or heard a voice, and gods are the only possible way this could ever happen."</b> OK - this is probably the only argument I take seriously because this was my own ultimate fallback once upon a time. So, I get it. "I know what I know, I saw what I saw, I felt what I felt." As a believer my only concern about the argument from testimony was that other people who believed the wrong stuff about the wrong gods kept getting the wrong answers using this <i>exact same</i> methodology. If God was sending these telepathic messages to my brain, then why were other people getting similar but factually incorrect or even directly contradictory messages? Why was God gas-lighting me so hard in this really mean way?<br />
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There are field dressings and apologetics for this problem, but I found no real satisfactory answer until I learned that the brain basically works by hallucinating everything all the time. Mostly the hallucinations should closely reflect what is going on in the real world around you, but this isn't strictly necessary. It is not just possible, but quite common for a brain to produce hallucinations of sight, sound, voices, or feelings as required and at a moment's notice. And the nature of hallucination as the normal mode of braining is that you cannot readily tell when the hallucination is tracking reality or when it has gone off the rails. You have to be constantly vigilant and always testing your experience to verify that it is tracking reality; and even then the brain can fool you for lengthy periods of time.<br />
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Personal "spiritual" experiences are not evidence of actual gods, but are evidence of belief in gods. You can condition a human to believe in practically any absurd thing, and the person will have internal experiences that confirm the belief to him. Some people talk to or even see ghosts, which are entirely an imaginary thing. Some people see aliens, bigfoot, mermaids, fairies, or an endless array of phantasms limited only by imagination but strongly influenced by the memes to which the person had previous exposure. If your proof of a particular god is by telepathy only, then you essentially have no proof. And your hallucinations are inadmissible evidence that I too should infer anything from your claims. I've had hallucinations, too. I know all about them. And people who were raised with entirely different beliefs have entirely different hallucinations.<br />
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The godophiles invent a lot of excuses for why the gods only communicate cryptically, through numerology or astrology, through obtuse word games, in ways that are completely identical to hallucinations, or through specific people with whom he/she/they/it insist on dealing exclusively. But why must that be the case? If there were real gods about, they would certainly be capable of revealing themselves in indisputable ways, and have no real need to be so evasive. It turns out the only way we know anything at all about these gods is through humans making the claims without proof, evidence, or valid argument.<br />
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I reject the existence of gods and goddesses, and denounce their expounders as dishonest frauds. There is no good reason to assume that such things are real or are anything other than bedtime stories for children. If I am wrong, show me evidence that is concordant with no other explanation. Better yet, produce specimens of your gods for examination.<br />
<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-27689463571648456202018-03-15T08:48:00.001+08:002018-03-15T09:16:53.375+08:00Follow-Up On The Follow-Up On Fake Deter-MinismOk - WHY do I think that Classical Thermodynamics alone without the help of quantum indeterminism is sufficient to destroy the unfounded belief in a deterministic universe?<br />
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You will need to know a little bit of Physics to become fully persuaded by this line of reasoning. No - I lie. You will need to know a LOT of Physics.<br />
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But I will endeavour to make it understandable to the lay person who wants to understand at least what this line of reasoning consists of.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Could the Universe go backwards?</td></tr>
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Classical Newtonian interactions - nay even Relativistic Newtonian interactions - are time-reversible. Newtonian Mechanics consists essentially of conservation of all momentums for either elastic or inelastic collisions, which includes the famous F=Ma law that expands momentum conservation to account for forces and fields. Running the video backwards of any experiment in which particles interact using Newtonian Mechanics does not produce any violations of Newtonian physics, or specifically the three Laws of Motion that are the foundation of classical physics.<br />
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Interactions of individual particles in a thermodynamic body, whether solid, liquid, gas, or plasma, are individually Newtonian and hence time-reversible. Individually, you can run each collision backwards without violating any physics. From strictly a Newtonian point of view, all processes in the universe should be totally reversible. This is the very reason, when you think about it, why many people are wedded to the idea of Determinism and feel that all future states of the universe are pre-determined by the initial state.<br />
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However, Entropy destroys information. This makes Thermodynamic processes basically irreversible. A large collection of particles, each interacting in strictly Newtonian fashion, can only proceed in the forward direction of time without violating basic Thermodynamic physics. Why is this?<br />
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The reason for this is fundamentally statistical: higher-entropy states are vastly, ridiculously more probable than lower-entropy states simply because there are so vastly many more of them. (Entropy is essentially a statistic which measures the degree to which energy in a system is evenly distributed throughout the system.) The probability is overwhelmingly that in any given transition from one state to another through the cumulative effect of countless Newtonian interactions of countless particles, that transition will be from a relatively rare lower entropy state to a relatively more abundant higher entropy state. Note also that many higher-entropy states are physically indistinguishable from one another. Going backwards even one step is just so ridiculously improbable such that it literally could never happen in the entire lifetime of a universe.<br />
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So, putting these two concepts of physics together, if we start from some initial state and roll time forward, each collision, each trajectory, each vibration of each particle perfectly obeying reversible Newtonian physics, following the laws of Thermodynamics we inevitably reach states of higher and higher entropy. At some point let us decide to stop the video and run time backwards, supposing we were able to magically do this - say perhaps in a simulation.<br />
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From that higher entropy state, if we attempt to run the clock backwards and get back to the initial state of the system, we find that the information about that state has been lost - destroyed actually - by Entropy, and we will not be able to find that initial state again. Even if artificially forcing the system into impossibly lower and lower entropy states, what we find is that although we manage to wrangle the system back into some minimum-entropy state, it is not the SAME minimum-entropy state that we started out in. We do not get the initial conditions back again - the initial conditions that were supposedly deterministic of all future states of the system.<br />
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If you can get to the same or an indistinguishable higher entropy state from any number of initial states, and if the individual interactions are time-reversible, and by reversing time we do not get back to the one initial state because the information about that state has been erased by entropy, then that means that either initial states of thermodynamic systems are NOT deterministic of all future states, or that Thermodynamics is wrong.<br />
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And Thermodynamics is demonstrably not wrong.<br />
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To summarize the case against Determinism by Physics:<br />
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<ul>
<li>The N-Body System is ultimately chaotic and any given future state is in no way inevitable whether by initial-state ambiguity or by non-inevitable system perturbations. By what means? Perhaps ultimately by the stochastic Gravitational Wave noise from the Big Bang itself that permeates the universe. Any infinitesimal perturbation of a chaotic system is all it takes to tip it into a wildly divergent state trajectory over time. </li>
<li>Thermodynamic systems are never Deterministic on a microscopic scale because initial-state information is erased by Entropy and is thereafter irrelevant and non-determining of subsequent states.</li>
<li>Finally, at the Quantum level Determinism doesn't stand a chance; even Causality has issues and must be regarded as at best an emergent property of more complex, large-scale physics. The initial state of the universe at the Big Bang cannot be understood without Quantum Physics plus some other stuff we don't even know about yet, meaning that the initial state itself must have been ambiguous and undetermined, and subsequent states were random rather than causal consequences of that state.</li>
</ul>
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In the end, Determinism from Physics is a purely speculative nonsense concept and is not a real feature of this universe. <i><b>Do Not</b></i> base anything you think, including any conclusions about Free Will, on the nonexistent error known as Determinism. Nothing is inevitable here except perhaps Entropy.</div>
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-1648397722177763912018-03-14T08:32:00.000+08:002018-03-14T08:43:28.212+08:00Follow-Up on Determinism: It's Still Fake NewsThe most well-reasoned objection to my <a href="http://aussieshed.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/free-will-versus-determinism.html" target="_blank">demolition of Determinism</a> was posited by none other than myself (who could be more qualified?) and is as follows:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Consider the example of the remarkable engineering masterpiece known as the Curta calculator, which was presented as having arithmetic competence as an emergent property possessed by none of its components individually. Using the Curta to calculate the recursive formula <i>X</i> = R*<i>X</i>*(1-<i>X</i>) for R around 3.6 results in an essentially random (<i>chaotic</i>, technically) sequence of <i>X</i>'s. The evolution of values may not be apparently deterministic in the sense that values follow some consistent pattern; but if you started with the same seed value you would get the same sequence time after time; thus the sequence is determined and hence Deterministic. </blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Curta Type II Calculator</td></tr>
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True enough, and fair enough. Testing Determinism in this manner requires further exploration, since in practice as I pointed out to myself above, it does not seem to rule out Determinism. However, when examined carefully, this procedure does not actually constitute a fair test of Determinism, because the calculator cannot handle infinity decimal places.<br />
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Chaos has the property that any infinitesimally insignificant variation in initial conditions or perturbation of subsequent states can produce an arbitrarily large divergence in outcomes at some future time less than infinity. To contradict Determinism, we would have to show that with initial conditions specified with even infinity decimal places, the outcome is still not inevitable. The Curta Type II (released in 1954) has 11 input digits, 8 counter digits, and 15 result digits. Alert Readers may notice that none of those numbers is infinity. The effect of this is what we call quantization of the results, or in popular parlance, "round-off error." This means that at every calculation, the result is forced artificially into one of a relatively few allowable values which are "rounded off" to the nearest decimal place retained by the mechanism. Therefore the result does not accurately reflect the actual theoretical result of the algorithm.<br />
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The consequence of quantization is that at each step, the evolution of the process is reset to a fixed, known value. There just isn't ever enough time for the true chaotic nature of the algorithm to evolve if it keeps getting reset to one of a relatively small number of possible values. The only fair test of this form of non-determinism would be to see whether, with infinity decimal places, one result diverges from the result of previous experiments when the initial conditions are infinitely identical and infinite precision is retained at each step.<br />
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Why do I think that would be the case? Purely mathematically it shouldn't happen in an idealized calculation. But an infinity-digit version of the Curta calculator (the actual Universe, effectually) is a thermodynamic object, and those digits are represented by components which are thermodynamic bodies subject to entropy. With infinity digits, the chances are good (100%, I'd say) that there will be random errors in the calculation eventually, making it impossible to obtain the same result twice in a physical process, thus making any given physical result <i>not inevitable</i>. The evolution of the universe is essentially a physical (analog) calculation of the of states of the universe as time progresses. While ultimately the states experience quantization similar to a 15-digit calculator's round-off error, this quantization is small enough to still allow plenty of uncertainty to creep in. In addition, quantum uncertainty (à la Heisenberg) introduces its own bit-errors into the evolution of states.<br />
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Any limited calculator isn't a true representation of chaotic behaviour. Only unlimited decimal places can accurately carry out a chaotic calculation, and when you have that many decimal places you will also have a meaningful probability of digit (or bit) errors. These facts taken together essentially require that any two physical embodiments of a chaotic system must diverge from perfectly identical initial conditions and are thus in no way Deterministic.<br />
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An example of a non-deterministic calculation being carried out is human genetics. The calculation is essentially, "let's combine two genomes and find out what happens, then combine that one with some other combination, and so on, generation after generation." To do this calculation perfectly with the same result in any two hypothetical "runs" of this experiment starting from identical initial genomes requires that there be no computational errors. Ever. In reality, every human has something like 20 or 30 random errors (known as "mutations") in their genome. Due to the thermodynamic nature of the mechanisms for encoding the genome and carrying out the replication, truly random, stochastic errors are inevitable and no result is ever "evitable" or assured, pre-determined, unavoidable, inescapable, or whatever the polar opposite of inevitable may be.<br />
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Notice that in a crowded cell where particles are constantly interacting with each other and with electromagnetic fields, quantum indeterminism does not really enter into it because quantum states are constantly being collapsed and re-formed at every interaction. While others may, I do not think that randomness ultimately depends on quantum indeterminism, but that thermodynamic stochasticity is more than sufficient to provide for true in-principle and fundamental randomness in any physical system.<br />
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Therefore, it is inevitable that you are a Mutant; but what kind of mutant was in no way predetermined by physics.John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-86254300921680015892018-03-10T16:54:00.003+08:002018-03-10T17:30:46.717+08:00Free Will Versus DeterminismCertain scientists who seem to have only recently discovered philosophy on wikipedia have announced that finally, at long last, they and they alone have solved the question of Free Will for good and all. Popular thing-sayers such as Sam Harris have informed us that because of a thing they read about called Determinism, there can be no free will. Meanwhile professional philosophers such as Daniel Dennett who have spent just a wee bit more time on the subject say "Bollocks! Determinism is entirely compatible with Free Will; although Free Will might not be quite what you thought it was."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnOX_3DSTwfTjI2Uxs_FtDLKXVcRC_nJoejbAHzxKoyRxQn9KKaqyG7VvDfp0LerRoqG5mxhXm0nkT1KbdGP2tZhcZtviRY4TB0bhvmdcKyDVs6FQJWLd6aBw8KA8IV4rBWwr5w8Mk3J8/s1600/Curta_type_I-CnAM_40092-IMG_6721-white.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="220" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnOX_3DSTwfTjI2Uxs_FtDLKXVcRC_nJoejbAHzxKoyRxQn9KKaqyG7VvDfp0LerRoqG5mxhXm0nkT1KbdGP2tZhcZtviRY4TB0bhvmdcKyDVs6FQJWLd6aBw8KA8IV4rBWwr5w8Mk3J8/s320/Curta_type_I-CnAM_40092-IMG_6721-white.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A simple mechanism which, when assembled, produces the emergent competence of performing arithmetic calculations even though no one of its parts has this ability! Curiously, if used to compute x = r*x*(1-x) repeatedly with r chosen to be around 3.6, this simple mechanical device cannot even be said to be deterministic.</td></tr>
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I would like to point out at this juncture that the title of this post is an unadulterated lie. It is a lying, lying lie in every possible way. It is lying about Free Will, it is lying about Determinism, and it is lying about the Versus part, too. Hopefully the remainder of this post will make up for these despicable lies by acquainting you with some small part of the truth.<br />
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We start with Determinism. This is the idea that the universe proceeds like a clockwork, obeying physical laws such that given the initial conditions, all future states of the universe can at least in principle be predicted in advance or calculated in retrospect. The very idea came to prominence in response to Newton's physics in the late 17th C when philosophers, impressed by slightly improved (but by no means perfect) predictions of planetary orbits, began asking, "What <b><i>if</i></b> someday the planet's positions really COULD be predicted accurately forever? And what <b><i>if</i></b> everything in the universe also worked just like that? Would that not mean that everything, every future state of the universe including human behaviour, would be predictable and thus predetermined by the initial state of the universe?"<br />
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Well, yes, it might mean that <b><i>IF</i></b> the universe worked that way. People forget that key word, "if," and make the mistake of assuming that rigid-body Newtonian physics applied to a handful of structureless bodies is all the physics that the universe has or needs. But "Deterministic" Newtonian physics could not even predict the planets' positions very accurately over a few hundred years; and in the case of Mercury, hardly at all. Determinism as we shall see is a complete lie and a fiction. It never existed, even in Newton's day, and doesn't exist now.<br />
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First of all, there are WAAAAAY more than seven bodies in the universe. With more and more interacting parts, even perfectly classical Newtonian systems become chaotic over shorter and shorter periods of time. Even with as few as N=3 single rigid bodies interacting in a system, you need to have infinitely precise information - 12^N measurements out to infinity decimal places each - on the initial state of the system in order to make accurate predictions of the system's state out to large timescales, still more for an infinite timescale. The Universe itself is not large enough to contain that infinite amount of information nor does it have enough matter in which to encode that infinity of information.<br />
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But whether or not the information of the initial conditions is encoded in anything other than the initial universe itself, the precision required for long-term determination of a chaotic system cannot itself even exist given the known limitations of matter, space, energy or, well, universes themselves.<br />
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Therefore I assert that the existence of sufficient information to make a chaotic system predictable and therefore determined at all time is not a thing that can exist in the universe; or in other words, it's not a real thing even in this simplest case of a universe with an unreasonably small and boring number of rigid bodies obeying Newton's boring version of physics. Even in that simplified universe, there is no such thing as Determinism.<br />
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It gets worse though. With any more reasonable number of bodies in the universe (say, a few million) Newtonian physics is no longer a suitable representation of physics. Mind, it still can be used to describe individual short-term interactions between particles and energy; but the cumulative state of the universe is now a statistical, stochastic thing which any one of countless initial conditions could equally well produce. That universe has an average kinetic energy represented by Temperature, an average potential energy represented by Pressure, and average quantities for particle sizes and masses represented by density and an equation of state. Trajectories of individual particles and the momentary interactions between individual particles are meaningless, unknowable, and at best short-term phenomena with no long-term influence on the future states of the universe; only cumulatively do they have any influence. In this realm of Thermodynamics, there is no Determinism.<br />
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But it gets even worse than that. Bodies in the universe are not, as assumed up to this point, individual rigid particles. They are thermodynamic globs of particles - solids, liquids, gasses, plasmas. They have practically infinite numbers of possible internal states that can have at best only statistical representations such as pressure, temperature, and average density. These thermodynamic systems are the bodies that interact in approximately Newtonian ways. Each of these bodies contains not merely a few thousands or millions of identical particles, but unimaginable numbers of great varieties of particles. Practically a universe within itself, a single grain of sand contains more individual particles than the number of grains of sand on the beach from which it is plucked. Even the external parameters (e.g. the mass and shape of a grain of sand) have an unknowable infinity of possibilities, not to mention internal configurations. The universe is a thermodynamic universe of innumerable thermodynamic universes, thus increasing the indeterminism of the universe exponentially. It is Random raised to the power of Random. Determinism disintegrates in a single grain of sand, and still more so on the greater beach of existence which is an ever-shifting system of forces, matter and energy obeying mainly Newtonian laws.<br />
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But we're not done destroying Determinism yet. This absurd idea needs to be obliterated right down to the level of the fundamental nature of matter, energy, and existence itself. You've probably heard of Quantum Mechanics; and some small part of what you've heard might even be correct. While Quantum Mechanics predicts and requires that bodies consisting of more than a few thousand individual particles must always obey Newtonian Mechanics to an absurdly high degree of precision, those individual particles themselves have entirely different rules of engagement. In fact, at that scale the notion of a particle as a tiny pellet of matter is something of a convenient fiction - merely an efficient way of maintaining an accounting of quantum numbers for charge, mass, energy, spin, and other quantities which must obey certain strict rules in order to interact and transform.<br />
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Let us take an atomic nucleus as an example. A nucleus is a particle which itself is an arrangement of protons and neutrons that are all stuck together. Let's pick as an instructive example one having 55 protons and 75 neutrons, which by convention we know as a Caesium 130 nucleus. Protons have a unit of positive electric charge each, and are thus in a continual state of repelling each other with tremendous force owing to how close together they are. This repulsive force would ordinarily overwhelm the inherent contact stickiness that these particles have for each other, causing them to fly off in opposite directions at high velocity; but the additional 75 neutrons surrounding and embracing those protons provide almost enough extra adhesion to keep this nucleus together. Just three more neutrons are all that would be needed to render this nucleus perfectly stable forever. But as it stands the poor hapless Cs130 nucleus is always just on the verge of breaking apart.<br />
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When will it do so? At what time? In what fragments and in what directions? These questions have fundamentally no answers within the universe, even in principle. Even the "when" question for an individual Cs130 nucleus can only be answered with the evasive, "any moment now, or possibly never." A large assemblage of Cs130 nuclei can at best be treated statistically: on average, half of those nuclei will blow up within the next 29.21 minutes, and the remaining half anywhere from then until the end of time. There is not even any underlying mechanism at work which could in principle be used to predict and determine the time of decay. Physicists have searched for such an internal mechanism for a century and have found instead only the opposite: more indeterminism at every level.<br />
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By using the word "Determinism" in the title of this post, I was lying to you by allowing you to think Determinism was even a real thing in physics. It is not in any sense a real thing, as we have seen. At best, simple machines of only a few moving parts isolated from the messy, noisy universe can be treated as deterministic for specific periods of time. But liquids, gases, complex systems of solid objects, very large objects, very small objects, thermodynamic systems, chemical systems, and, most importantly, biological systems cannot even theoretically be regarded as deterministic for any length of time, much less from the beginning of time throughout eternity.<br />
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While in a sense physics determines chemistry, and chemistry determines biology, and biology determines you, this line of reasoning uses a subtly different definition of the word and is not what is meant by Determinism with a capital D. The kind of Determinism that could potentially have any impact on Free Will is the kind that states that all future states of the universe are able to be perfectly predicted by and are thus determined by the initial conditions of the universe. In other words, the present state of the universe was absolutely inevitable and pre-determined, as are all futures that ever will be observed. And that, says physics, is Bollocks.<br />
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However, it may not even matter that Determinism from Physics is a silly fiction, because I was also lying about the "Versus" part. Free Will and Determinism, as Prof. Dennett, pointed out, really have nothing to do with one another. So what if your actions are Determined by something? You'd better hope they are, actually. Where would we be if all our actions were the result of random coin-flips, dice-rolls, card shuffles, or noise-based stochastic random number generators? I mean, other than in the midst of a D&D game. Hard-core believers in the fiction of Determinism may still complain that such processes are (as they believe) the determined results of make-believe physics and initial conditions in their make-believe universe. But even allowing for that, would a coin-flip make you feel any better about your self-determination than having your actions locked in by something like reason, reflex, habit, or animal instinct?<br />
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The point is that whether your actions are determined by physics (no way), by chemistry (hmm...), by biology (quite possibly), by reason (sometimes), or are merely random noise, you are still accountable as a morally competent agent, even if (or particularly since) that agent is not some supernatural entity. Even if a moral agent is really just a complex process and not an entity as such, that agent could well meet the requirements of Moral Competence:<br />
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<li>The agent must have something of significance to gain or lose - livelihood, freedom, security, any of the fundamental needs or problems of a perishable organism.</li>
<li>The agent must have the in-principle ability to select among any of several actions and privacy of mind for concealing its intentions until advantageous to reveal them.</li>
<li>The agent must have at least the competence to make a judgement in its own best interest, regardless of whether or not it chooses to do so. </li>
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Just as chaos emerges from complexity as a system acquires more and more moving parts, and just as temperature and pressure emerge as a system acquires more and more particles and becomes a thermodynamic gas, and just as Design emerges from a large number of natural selections with evolutionary pressure, and as Competence emerges from assemblages of large number of individually incompetent parts, and just as what we might call "intelligence" emerges from a large number of dumb little neurons in a brain, why then is it so difficult to accept that "Free Will" emerges from a sufficiently large number of stimuli, needs, impulses, influences, memories, desires, fears, information, rationale, instincts, and yes, even the occasional coin flip?</div>
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This leads to the final lie I need to correct: Free Will. By referring to it, I have dishonestly mislead you into thinking that both you and I knew what Free Will even was. Well, what is it? This question remains unexamined by the people who rush to condemn it as impossible on the basis of something else that is even less possible (i.e. Determinism). In struggling through the largely incoherent Sam Harris thesis, I find myself wondering whether he thinks Free Will is by definition a supernatural force of some kind. A form of magic consisting of a disembodied Mind-Without-Brain, a sort of Ghost With A Plan that makes choices and steers its Meat Machine through life in order to fulfill the plan. </div>
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At any rate, that is explicitly what theists think Free Will is. And gods have the most of it, presumably. As an aside, one notes with mild disinterest that the numerous gods promulgated by the various abrahamic mythologies cannot be regarded as having any Free Will when taken as presented. These gods have nothing to gain or lose because they are "perfect" and "eternal." They lack nothing and thus can neither be rewarded for their rare good acts nor punished for their frequent evil. The gods have no choice nor privacy of mind if we listen to their backers who insist they know exactly what the gods like, dislike, want, or ever will do. We are often told for example that the gods "cannot lie" or must unavoidably reward or punish us, etc, effectively limiting their possible actions and freedom. Failing the first two criteria for Moral Competence, gods cannot be regarded as morally competent and thus cannot be regarded even as free agents, or possibly even as agents at all. But that is no surprise to those who already realized that gods are nothing more than fictional characters in a bronze-age comic book. </div>
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At any rate, the debate about Free Will has become a proxy battleground, in my personal experience, for the war between Naturalism and Supernaturalism. I have been accused of defending Supernaturalism for little more than explaining that Determinism does not actually follow from Physics!</div>
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To be clear, by explaining how Determinism fails, I have not left open the door to Supernaturalism. Instead, all I have pointed out is that Physics does not produce Determinism, not even in Newton's time. Very little in the universe is inevitable, particularly on the scale of the short lives of Meat Machines From Planet Earth (which by the way would be an excellent name for a rock band). It was not inevitable that smart monkeys evolved to look like we do. Neither was it inevitable that the continents and coastlines of Earth appear the way they do, nor that the craters on the moon are precisely in those positions. Perhaps only black holes and heat death are inevitable in this universe and are thus pre-determined. But none of the details, particularly the humans, monkeys, dogs, spiders, and even bacteria, are necessary, unavoidable, inevitable consequences of this universe, even in principle. Aside from even existing, each can and does make choices. Simple organisms make simple choices: Left or right? Up or down? Eat or avoid? How they produce or arrive at that competence is not relevant to the fact that they do posses that competence. Complex organisms make complex, abstract choices: Rook or Knight? Red tie or blue? Spend or save? Mac or Windows?</div>
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In the case of the intractable problem of defining "intelligence" we get much further by instead talking about Competencies. Similarly, Free Will is best defined as just one more layer of competence that organisms have to one degree or another. Free Will is not some magic Ghost With a Plan. Free Will is merely the competence to engage with and navigate a complex world. </div>
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However, there is another thing that could be meant by Free Will that is neither the opposite of physical predetermination nor demonic possession. It rests on the idea that the Self makes choices according to some set of values. We know that this isn't actually how decisions are made most of the time: usually the brain makes a decision calculated to stave off emotional discomfort and satisfy some need; and then the rational human uses the cognitive parts of the brain to make up a clever <i>post-hoc</i> excuse for doing whatever that is. Some people say that is not Free Will, but just the organism making "you" do stuff, (as though "you" and the organism are different actors), and if choices are in any way influenced by society or psychology, then it ain't no free will. Well, no, I say that is still the organism's Free Will at work; just that actions are once again not mere random noise undetermined by anything at all.</div>
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But if you want a "higher" level of free will such that your actions are not predetermined by your brain's conditioning or your automatic emotional responses to stimuli, then that's another thing entirely. In that sense, most of us filthy monkey-men never develop a free will and are entirely at the mercy of our condition and conditioning. By engaging in intentional manipulation of the cognition of the brain by tactics involving impulse control, momentary suspension of cognition, intentional management of emotional states, or other forms of "mindful" reflection as some describe it, individuals can and do develop the ability to exert higher degrees of rational determination of their actions and thus can better control the trajectories of their lives. If this is what is meant by free will - determination exclusively by rational reflection - then again we see it has nothing to do with either Determinism from physics or choice-determination by external stimuli, nor is it in any way a supernatural phenomenon. </div>
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That augmented form of free will is yet another emergent property or competence of the brain, which in the case of a self-reflective, mindful individual, has been turned in to a sort of GPU that runs the individual's selected apps in place of the evolutionary default operating processes that even monkeys use to navigate the world in the execution of their Free Will. It is still not evidence of ghosts with plans, and it is even further removed from Determinism from Physics, Chemistry, Biology, or Ecology. This kind of free will advances even to the level of non-determination from human society, and even ultimately from psychology. </div>
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"Wah! But Determinism! A computer executing code is Determinism! Wah!"</div>
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Nope! Even if the hardware is entirely Deterministic within the timeframe of the experiment (one hopes that it is), a software program running on a hardware platform does not absolutely inherit the property of Determinism from the hardware. Of course software algorithms are a long way from being complex enough to exhibit emergent properties of "higher" competencies. There is also the problem that a mere algorithm abstracted from any particular hardware will struggle to qualify as Morally Competent because it will always lack the problems or needs of a perishable organism. But the whole point is that as a system becomes more complex, new (higher level) properties emerge and old (lower level) ones dissolve. </div>
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You may be able to pre-determine the behaviour of a watch that is wound up and running perfectly; but you will never be able to predict the exact way in which that watch corrodes and decomposes if left unattended in a riverbed for a few decades. And as any system becomes more complex than that watch (a very simple mechanism, really), then less and less can be pre-determined about it. If a system becomes sufficiently complex to exhibit emerging competencies of choice, then predicting its behaviour using physics becomes wholly impossible, and new more complex models are required. These must include models of biology, sociology, and psychology, but will never have the accuracy or precision of physics or even chemistry. </div>
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Therefore what ever the definition of Free Will, and whatever kinds of Determinism you want to talk about, there simply is no vital connection between the two ideas, and one certainly does not preclude the other. Also, while certain meanings of Determinism demonstrably do not exist as realities, in no way can it be said that Free Will does not exist, for most of the definitions applied to it, with one exception: </div>
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There are no Magic Ghosts with Plans; we Meat Machines are free to do as we please.</div>
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John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-85833053841821221392018-02-04T16:21:00.004+08:002018-03-11T09:20:46.016+08:00Universal Consciousness - Destroyed Some MoreOne of the most prevalent arguments used to support the belief in a Universal Consciousness - a vaguely defined form of new-age religious deism - is the argument from Quantum Physics. Frauds like Deepshit Choke-Ya are fond of making claims along the lines that quantum physics proves that the nature of reality is controlled by Consciousness or some shit. Well, I am here to tell you that Quantum Physics has absolutely nothing to say on the subject of consciousness, and definitely does not support the nonsense notion of a universal consciousness.<br />
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Nobody knows what anyone really means by "universal consciousness" other than it is a kind of non-denominational substitute for gods or goddesses - universal magical powerful agencies that, like, do shit and stuff. Allegedly. But we do have a really good idea of what quantum physics is, which I will attempt to convey to you now.<br />
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Quantum physics (more properly Quantum Mechanics or QM) is a mathematical method of making very precise predictions about subatomic particles, their properties, their behavior, and their interactions. The most important tool of QM is the Schroedinger Wave Equation (SWE), the solutions to which correspond to valid physical configurations of matter, energy, momentum, spin, and a number of other fundamental quantum numbers (i.e. quantitized physical values). If you're not solving the Schroedinger Wave Equation, then you, my friend, are not "studying" Quantum Physics.<br />
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QM does make some astonishing predictions about the behavior of subatomic particles, however. Less well known is the fact that QM makes some very boring predictions about every-day-sized objects. QM predicts and requires that everyday objects like baseballs and people must behave exactly according to Newtonian mechanics. That's right - QM says Newton was right!<br />
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Also, in QM an electron may go backwards in time as a positron. But you, my friend, are not a single subatomic particle. You are a thermodynamic Process involving large numbers of interacting particles, and as such YOU may only proceed forwards in time. And you can also never enter a black hole either, except by having all your atoms ripped apart in the process. So don't go getting any ideas. This shit applies to <i>individual subatomic particles only</i> and to nothing else.<br />
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Among the more astonishing predictions made by QM is that a single particle can appear to be in several places at once. This is not actually so, but it is a consequence of an interpretation of QM which insists on maintaining the fiction of particles as actual objects. In reality, particles are merely conceptual collections of quantum numbers - energy, charge, momentum, spin etc - which must all follow rules of interactions that proceed from solutions to the SWE. For example, energy may only enter or leave the electromagnetic field in whole quanta for a given wavelength of light. Thus a photon (a quanta of light) is a very useful fiction, since it helps us keep track of energy and momentum being put into or removed from electromagnetism through interactions with matter.<br />
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When the object-permanence stumbling block is removed, then the prediction about propagating quanta being in more than one place at a time becomes less astonishing, and is actually what one would expect. The famous two-slit experiment demonstrates that light actually does propagate in the form of waves, and also proves that electromagnetic energy is also quantitized. The electromagnetic wave passes through both slits while a quanta of energy from the e/m field is deposited on a screen at a specific point on the other side. No actual little ball of light called a "photon" magically passed through two places at once. A photon does not exist in-transit. It only "exists" at the point of production and again at the point of absorption (i.e. during any interaction) as an accounting fiction for keeping track of energy and other quantum numbers which must be conserved.<br />
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Another astonishing "prediction" of QM relates to the Observer Effect. There is no Observer Effect. Let me be clear on that. The "Observer Effect" obtained its name from a mis-translation of a German research paper and is nothing more interesting than the fact that particles are affected by their interactions with other particles. Duh!<br />
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The requirement that energy, momentum and other physical values must be quantitized has the effect that no measurement can ever be made without radically interfering with a particle, if not actually destroying the particle and turning is parts into something else. Any measurement made on a particle requires that some form of particle interaction take place, and no interaction takes place without there being an effect on the particles involved. Therefore the "Observer Effect" is really the interaction-measurement effect.<br />
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While philosophers wrongly argue that there can be no Observation without a Mind to do the observing, they missed the point that most interactions take place without any measurements being carried out; and most measurements are made without anyone even looking at or being aware of the data. I guess they never heard of data acquisition electronics which operate just fine without human intervention. The interaction-measurement effect therefore does not in any way imply or rely on the existence of a Mind. Therefore the unsupported extension of this concept to the idea that Consciousness keeps the universe together is based on error and is completely wrong. As Wolfgang Pauli would have said, "That's so far from being right, it's not even wrong!" Meaning that there is no way to even fix the notion to make it a less wrong notion.<br />
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QM is only spooky and mysterious when one attempts to interpret it using overly-simplistic concepts like particles as little objects that bounce around like billiard balls. A particle is not an object, but a collection of quantum numbers tied together by events and interactions. They are mathematical, accounting objects, not little beads or pellets of matter. When physicists properly think of them like this, then we do not have to invent outrageous and confusing analogies to the everyday world in order to understand or explain them, and fraudulent con-men cannot claim that modern physics empirically supports their new-age religion scams.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-27853619789775713982018-02-04T14:51:00.003+08:002018-02-04T15:12:46.270+08:00Universal Consciousness - DestroyedIn 1994, Nobel Laureate Francis Crick published a landmark book called <i>The Astonishing Hypothesis</i> in which he urged the scientific community to begin regarding human consciousness as a valid subject of scientific investigation. Until that point, the vast majority of people including scientists (myself included) felt that there was something not quite biological, physical, or scientifically reducible about human consciousness; or at least that this would always be an intractable problem.<br />
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Since that time, enormous advances in neuroscience have occurred, assisted by previously unimagined new capabilities in imaging technology and the computer technology that enables them. It is now mainstream, well-supported scientific consensus that consciousness is entirely biological in origin.<br />
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A specifically "conscious" part of the brain has never been identified, but consciousness is clearly exclusively associated with brain activity observed via fMRI. There are also these things called drugs which, when you put them in your brain, alter consciousness and make you think and feel differently, almost like you're a different person. Also it is well known that if the brain becomes injured, the way you think and feel and even your personality can completely change. Finally, if the brain breaks down and stops, like, brainalyzing or whatever, then you aren't conscious at all anymore.<br />
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It is clear from all evidence that without a brain, there is no consciousness, even if scientists can't agree on exactly what consciousness is. But an understanding is gradually emerging that consciousness may not be quite what we thought it was - an entity or an algorithm of some kind - but rather that it is really just a deep pile of competences layered upon one another from which the sense of being a Person emerges. As those competences are removed one by one, so fades the sense of Self and consciousness. Therefore it is less useful to ask, "what is consciousness?" and instead investigate neuro-biological competence, including the interesting question of what is required for Moral Competence.<br />
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Ants have about 250,000 neurons, and you can make them run around crazy by poking sticks at them. That is something they are competent at doing. Dogs have about 2.2 billion neurons, and they can count to three, but they also eat their own poops. Humans have about 86 billion neurons - not just the ones that can do calculus, but also including the ones that purchase whole life insurance and are dumb. It is therefore clearly not just the number of neurons, but how they are connected and how they function. In other words, the brain requires conditioning in order to have high levels of competence and therefore consciousness.<br />
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As an aside, we might wonder what would happen if we had a lot more neurons. Would we be super-duper intelligent? Would we develop, like, telekinesis or something? Well, elephants have about 250 billion neurons, about 3 times what we have. While they have pretty good memory, they evidently do not posses the power of telekinesis, or even the power of instagram. Although some of them are known to be exceptional artists.<br />
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So, we find that there is no single part of the brain that is "the consciousness." There are, however, specific parts, circuits, networks etc that are responsible for individual competencies. Consciousness is what emerges when all these competencies are combined, and consciousness is a kind of measure of the number and diversity of our competencies.<br />
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Neither is there any sharp line between conscious and not conscious. Lots of neurons = lots of neural competence; a few neurons = a few competencies; zero neurons = zero competence. Ants have fewer competencies than dogs, which have fewer than humans. Plants have a few limited competencies, and so might possibly be regarded as having a minimal degree of consciousness, even though they have no actual neurons. They do have some specialized cells called <i>bundle sheath cells</i> that behave somewhat like neurons.<br />
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Rocks have no competencies whatsoever, no internal functions or organized structure other than random crystallization grain structures, and are therefore in no way conscious at all by any measure or definition. Some may argue for the consciousness of ecosystems, but only to the extent that living systems have evolved any identifiable competencies. But there is absolutely no question of there being anything remotely like a "universal" consciousness in the sense of rocks or other inanimate objects being self-aware or having feelings or opinions.<br />
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Only the highest levels of competence endow a very few mammal species (notably humans) with a competence for self-awareness and the level of consciousness we associate with that sense of Self. Why did other species not get that even with far more evolutionary time under their belts? Well, they evidently did not need that particular competence for survival, or small evolutionary steps in that direction were of no advantage to them. Only humans are so physically regressive and degraded that we could only survive by being super aware, individual, and clever.<br />
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As early as 200,000 years ago, humans were basically physically as we are now, including our 86 billion neurons. If 190,000 years wasn't enough for us to invent Porsches and Breguet wrist-watches and Apple eye-phones, then what was so special about the last 10,000 years?<br />
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Software. It took a while, but once the ecosystem of human brains had become fertile enough ground for a new form of evolution to start taking place, bits and pieces of a new operating system began falling into place using a kind of fitness-for-survival driving force. Social orders developed, and our brains gained that competence. Language developed, and again 86 billion neurons were sufficiently large to accommodate languages. Crafts developed, using language as a stepping stone so that skills could be transmitted virally. Technologies developed which benefited success-driven software evolution by creating more human brains to infect. These include agriculture and animal husbandry, larger social structures, writing, fighting, money, irrigation, housing, clothing, etc. All these ideas form the suite of thinking tools that we use to think about ourselves - in other words, to be conscious.<br />
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Can there be consciousness without a brain? If you imagine seeing a ghost (that isn't actually there because you're hallucinating which is something brains are very competent at doing) and that ghost visibly has zero neurons in total because it's invisible and floating in the air, then what are the chances that the ghost is a conscious being that is super intelligent and has also magic ghost powers?<br />
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Zero. The answer is zero probability, to infinity decimal places. If there are no functioning neurons (a necessary but insufficient condition), then there is no functional competence and hence zero consciousness.<br />
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<i>"But what if the ghost has Ghost Neurons? Huh?"</i><br />
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Ok - you exponentially amp up the improbability of this nonsense by suggesting that it requires the further existence an even more improbable thing.<br />
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Sure - why not.<br />
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So - do these ghost neurons of yours also use ghost chemical neurotransmitters? What are they? How do they work? What are they made of? Can you murder a ghost by spraying lysol on it? Do your ghost neurons produce electrical impulses using actual electrical charge? Or is it some kind of never-before-detected form of ghost electricity? What keeps these ghost neurons together in a body? Ghost velcro? What is the source of the ghost neuron's energy? Does the ghost have a respiratory and circulatory system as well? Or does it run on ghost batteries?<br />
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Keep in mind that every time you have to propose some stop-gap <i>ad-hoc</i> new thing to keep the hypothesis from unraveling, you exponentially increase the improbability that some thing exists which has never been observed (actually, positively observed to not be there) and which would require the invalidation of mountains of established fact. And don't try hiding in the gaps of scientific knowledge - these are small and dwindling. The Argument from Ignorance is basically, "you don't know some minor detail, therefore vast swathes of my imaginary nonsense are proved conclusively." Can we hold you to that when that knowledge gap is eventually filled? Or will you continually move the goalposts?<br />
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You've heard of Occam's Razor? Well - get ready for Newton's Flaming Laser Sword of Truth. It's just like Occam's razor, but way more dangerous and devastating to bullshit. It works like this. Anyone who asserts the existence of a Mind in the absence of a Brain is under the obligation to produce logical observable consequences of that assertion. If they fail to do so, the assertion must be dismissed as effectively proven false.<br />
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One such potential observable consequence of the existence of Mind without Brain is that dead people should be able to pass real information to the living. Also, that new, real, and accurate information should be able to be received by prophecy alone.<br />
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Unfortunately, no real, accurate, specific information has ever been received from the dead or from prophecy, at a rate distinguishable from random chance. All practitioners of "talking to the dead" have been proven to be frauds who use mere parlor tricks, and their "information" is so nonspecific it has become a generic cliche'. "Does anyone in the room have, perhaps, an elderly relative who has died?" Um, no - we're all AI robots here.<br />
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Also, no prophecy has ever produced reliable new information (not previously known), and "prophets" almost universally miss a lot of really important and obvious stuff. "Prophets" are also almost always known to be frauds and criminals, and are therefore most untrustworthy in the first place.<br />
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This state of affairs must be regarded as powerful positive evidence in condemning the notion of Mind without Brain. No brain, no mind. Of that we can be absolutely certain.<br />
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John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-21508630717586386002017-10-07T11:53:00.001+08:002017-10-07T12:02:35.989+08:00In Defense of Dillahunty's AgnosticismMatt Dillahunty has articulated what I consider to be the most lucid and reasoned explanation for why he should be an agnostic atheist as opposed to the "hard" variety. He states that while there is no good evidence or argument that would compel him to accept the outrageous and absurd claims of religions, he also admits that he is unable to meet the burden of proof required of someone who claims to know with certainty that there are no gods or goddesses.<br />
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I happen to agree, from what I know of him, that in all likelihood Matt Dillahunty is not able to meet that burden of proof. Most people on the planet would not be capable of meeting that burden of proof. However I would not go so far as to claim that the burden of proof is impossible to meet, or that no one on the planet can now or ever do so.<br />
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So, hypothetically, what would it take to be able to definitively state as a matter of demonstrated fact that gods and goddesses are not real? That there is definitively and provably <i>no god</i>?<br />
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Step one is to recognize that "god" is a word linked to a broad and poorly-defined category of nebulous, shape-shifting ideas. Attempting to connect such a word with any actual evidence is like trying to state anything definitive about Zlypph. Who or what is Zlypph? Not telling. You have to figure it out and prove that it is or isn't real. Well, this is a pointless task, unless we can attach some actual meaning to this worn-out placeholder.<br />
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We therefore go right ahead and do exactly that - attach some actual meaning to the word that is more than the vague bewildered gooey feeling ignorant people get in their brains when they are sad or can't comprehend something. We must pin languages' most shape-shifting word to a specific meaning, such as "a universally powerful intelligent agent." Even without all the adornments that various religions hang onto this definition or the numerous properties, characteristics, agendas, likes or dislikes that vary from one god to another, this, surprisingly, is enough for us to proceed.<br />
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Now, let's imagine that an individual has access to some unspecified but sufficiently large amount of reliable knowledge. And by "reliable" I mean of course scientific knowledge. Science as we know is the most reliable process for knowing things. Compared to Science, every other way of knowing is no better than random guessing, and often considerably worse. This is a direct result of the way Science always seeks disconfirmation rather than confirmation. It is almost impossible for a false hypothesis to withstand skilled and determined efforts to disconfirm it using repeatable empirical evidence and unassailably rigorous analysis consisting of both logical and quantitative reasoning. Only something that is reasonably true, that is, having a reasonable concordance with the real universe, can stand up to that kind of treatment. And so, scientific knowledge is the only reliable knowledge.<br />
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Using unlimited access to this scientific knowledge along with the resulting comprehension of the natural laws, principles, processes, matter, objects, forces, fields, effects, or phenomena of the real universe, including the biosphere and its development on this planet, such a broadly informed person could be in a position to ask himself, "Is there some all-powerful (or nearly so) Agency at work in the universe?"<br />
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In order to answer in the affirmative, our polymath scientist would have to identify two enabling circumstances that are necessary but insufficient conditions. In simple terms, these two things have to be found in order for gods to be real; but even then only producing an actual specimen would prove it beyond doubt.<br />
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Those circumstances are as follows:<br />
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1. We must see evidence that such an agency is or has been active. We must observe objects, circumstances, processes or incidents that positively have no natural explanation or ordinary human or animal agency as their cause. So far, all of the vast quantity of evidence that we have can be readily accounted for using natural processes or animal/human agency. There is no evidence that the universe is or has been influenced in any way that only a powerful universal Agency could produce.<br />
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2. We must be able to identify specific processes or mechanisms by which this influence occurs or could occur. That is, what is the entry point or point(s) of contact between this Agency and the physical universe? We have thoroughly and meticulously scoured all of the possible physical interactions over a wide range of energy levels from the smallest weakest particles to the most powerful forces and objects in the cosmos. What we know is that there are three and only three forces operating on matter and energy: the strong nuclear force, the electromagnetic/weak nuclear force, and the gravitational pseudo-force.* We know and it has been demonstrated that there are and can be no other forces operating in these regimes. We know how those forces work and all the ways that matter and energy interact through those forces. We know that, within the limits that can possibly affect objects ranging from electrons up to massive stars, there is no other way for the physical universe consisting of matter and energy to be influenced other than through these forces acting on these particles.<br />
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The absence of evidence where that evidence MUST exist is definitive evidence of absence. Therefore there is positively no supernatural, no magic, no ghosts "outside" the universe sticking their hands in and tweaking or nudging it, or any such thing. The mechanisms that would enable such influence to occur would have been evident exactly in the places we have been searching.<br />
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We also have zero evidence that such influence has been taking place, and certainly with nothing like the regularity that theists claim it is occurring. Again, the absence of this evidence is the evidence.<br />
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If you have been paying close attention, you may now be objecting that we have actually been evaluating the claim that gods exist, rather than the claim that they do not. We have actually assumed the burden of proof of the deists/theists. But a careful examination of the scientific evidence allows a sufficiently informed individual to conclude that the evidences or lack thereof for one claim are the same as for the opposite claim. In particular, that the singular absence of evidence for the claim made by deists is precisely all the positive evidence needed to meet the burden of proof required of the gnostic anti-deist.<br />
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Now, if theists propose an even more narrowly specified god having particular qualities, properties, likes and dislikes, taking specified actions at specified times, then it becomes even easier to locate the (lack of) evidence required to disqualify and dismiss such claims, again positively. The positive presence of a big empty hole where the theists' evidence was supposed to be is itself the evidence.<br />
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Not everyone has access to a sufficiently deep and broad range of scientific evidence and knowledge sufficient to enable one to positively conclude that the theists' evidence is actually missing. It's too easy for most people to not know for certain that the evidence is not in some other field with which they are unfamiliar. Theists take advantage of this information segmentation or compartmentalization and deftly shift from one claim to another depending on what areas his debate opponent is least familiar with. But it is not impossible for some generalists in the basic sciences with informed interests in a wide range of other fields in pure and applied sciences to actually be capable of synthesizing all the information necessary to positively, definitively conclude that <i>there are no gods</i>.<br />
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My perception is that there are typically more hard atheists among scientists than among other walks of life. But I do not fault Matt Dillehunty for remaining agnostic. On the contrary, I applaud his honesty for refusing to claim that he can meet the hard atheist burden of proof. But he should not also fallaciously conclude that since he cannot, no one can.<br />
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Nor do I call for Matt to change his position. He should not, and I support him in his position. For one thing, his acceptance of scientific evidence without actually understanding or evaluating that evidence would be nothing more than an appeal to authority, which is just one more of the unreliable ways of knowing things that rational people deplore. But more importantly, Matt can do what few hard atheists can: connect and engage with people. Matt can build bridges, whereas scientists like me are only good at being divisive and intolerant. He is more gifted in that area than I can ever be, precisely because of his refusal to adopt the hard atheist position. No, Matt, we need you where you are. You're good.<br />
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*But what about dark matter/dark energy? We don't know what those are yet, so there could still be gods and magic, right? Wrong. These effects are not observed except on objects the size of a galaxy or bigger. So we ordinary people, stars, and planets are unaffected by these forces. But Your Mama should be more careful.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-8225896986979358292017-08-16T15:41:00.002+08:002017-09-05T10:59:05.217+08:00Evidence versus Arguments: A Guide to Knowing with Greater Certainty<br />
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We've all heard of logical fallacies - those errors of reasoning that can lead to unreliable conclusions but which seem convincing to someone motivated to believe. There is a complete taxonomy of fallacies, and some people rejoice in observing them in the wild, like bird watching.<br />
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<a href="https://www.firehousesubs.com/media/1762/med-ham_web_new_r4.png?anchor=center&mode=crop&width=675&height=500&rnd=131363996550000000" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for ham sub" border="0" height="148" src="https://www.firehousesubs.com/media/1762/med-ham_web_new_r4.png?anchor=center&mode=crop&width=675&height=500&rnd=131363996550000000" width="200" /></a>But there are just three particular fallacies I want to discuss here. One is a subset of Red Herring fallacies, called the Fallacy of Relative Privation. Red Herrings generally are a response to a position that instead of addressing the evidence for the position or the arguments that connect the evidence to the position's conclusion, simply changes the subject. For example:<br />
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<i>"How about cancer, huh? Pretty bad stuff, am I right?" </i><br />
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<i>"How DARE you minimize the suffering of people with heart disease!"</i><br />
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We've all seen exchanges like this in internet comments sections, and we can all recognize that the respondent is an irrational person. The first person has evidence which leads him to conclude that cancer is a bad thing, and the second person disagrees on the basis that something else exists which they perceive as being just as bad or worse. This Fallacy of Relative Privation leads the respondent to the unreliable conclusion that the first statement is somehow incorrect. <br />
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Another of my favourite fallacies is the Fallacy of Four Terms Via an Equivocation Error. Cool name, huh? The Four Terms refers to the fact that a classical syllogism has exactly three terms, not four; and slipping in a fourth (or fifth or sixth) term invalidates it. Basically, it states:<br />
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<i>If A = B, and if B = C, then A = C. </i><br />
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But if we introduce a fourth term, we get:<br />
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<i>If A = B, and C = D, then A = D. Or A = E. Or G = H.</i><br />
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This reasoning is clearly flawed.<br />
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What makes a Four Terms fallacy hard to spot is the addition of an Equivocation Error, i.e. you disguise the fact that B and C are not actually the same thing. While almost impossible to do using mathematical notation, it's pretty easy using the good ol' English Language. A great example is attributed to Lewis Carroll:<br />
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<i>If we accept that nothing is better than Eternal Bliss, </i><br />
<i>and that a Ham Sandwich is better than nothing, </i><br />
<i>then a Ham Sandwich is better than Eternal Bliss. </i><br />
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Clearly. Fun Fact: This syllogism was not found in an early draft of the Koran.<br />
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The equivocation error is that <i>nothing</i> is not the same thing as <i>nothing</i>. Get it? No?<br />
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Then let us rewrite the syllogism as follows:<br />
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<i>Given: the set of things greater in value than Eternal Bliss is empty.</i><br />
<i>Given: a Ham Sandwich is greater in value than any Empty Set. </i><br />
<i>Therefore, a Ham Sandwich is greater in value than the set of things that are greater than Eternal Bliss. </i><br />
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This exposes the fallacy, since it is not Eternal Bliss that a Ham Sandwich is greater than, rather the set of things greater than Eternal Bliss, which happens to be an empty set, since we have accepted (without evidence as it turns out) that Eternal Bliss is the greatest possible thing. <br />
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Therefore, if someone offers you the choice of a Ham Sandwich, or Everything that is Greater than Eternal Bliss, you take the ham sandwich, without question. Because the other thing is an empty set; in other words, nothing.<br />
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But if given the choice of a ham sandwich or Eternal Bliss, then you have to start asking for evidence of the existence of both Eternal Bliss AND this alleged ham sandwich.<br />
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This leads us to the relationship between arguments and evidence. An argument is just a way of drawing a continuous line between the evidence and some conclusion. A fallacious argument is like a broken line: the conclusion is not necessarily connected to that evidence. <br />
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But it should be recognized that there can be any number of lines (arguments) connecting the evidence to a conclusion. If one line is broken, that does not exclude the possibility of some other solidly connected line<br />
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This leads me to the third fallacy I wished to discuss: the Fallacy Fallacy. Just because an argument is fallacious doesn't mean that the conclusion is automatically wrong. It just means that the argument is wrong. In other words, the line is broken and the evidence and conclusion are not connected in that particular way. Perhaps by some other way, but not that one. The conclusion could still be right by some other unknown argument or on the back of some different evidence.<br />
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However, without at least some kind of evidence, all the greatest arguments in the world are meaningless. The lines leading to a conclusion have to lead back to something. They have to originate somewhere, from some kind of evidence.<br />
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I have seen a lot of different arguments for the existence of gods or goddesses. Hell, I invented some of them myself. The fact that I now find all of them in some way fallacious isn't even the most relevant point.<br />
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The real point is that there is no evidence that does not support some other, more concordant conclusion, or that does not require further baseless assumptions, e.g. invoking the supernatural. In many cases, the arguments for theism lead back to nothing - no originating evidence whatsoever. <br />
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In spite of the Fallacy of Four Terms via Equivocation, if someone offers you the choice of a ham sandwich or eternal bliss, take the ham sandwich. Lewis Carroll's argument may be dodgy, but the conclusion was still sound: a (real) Ham Sandwich is infinitely better than (nonexistent) Eternal Bliss. <br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-46605336641187779022017-08-12T17:20:00.000+08:002017-08-12T17:20:02.301+08:00What Is Post-Intelligent Design<br />
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Recently, <a href="http://newatlas.com/autodesk-generative-design-interview/50824/?li_source=LI&li_medium=default-widget" target="_blank">New Atlas posted this article</a> about machine-optimized design engineering. I immediately recognized it as a manifestation of what <a href="https://youtu.be/EJsD-3jtXz0" target="_blank">Daniel Dennett refers to in this video </a>(and many others) as Post-Intelligent Design.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="That's a load bearing engine block, optimized using a generative design algoritm" height="180" src="https://img.newatlas.com/generative-design-9.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&ch=Width%2CDPR&fit=crop&h=347&q=60&rect=48%2C0%2C1280%2C720&w=616&s=803aed3b63d3de584cc20b475613989c" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Engine Block designed using generative algorithms (New Atlas)</td></tr>
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Intelligence-Free design consists of natural processes such as evolution and natural selection which result in incredibly complex and highly optimized solutions. Bird bones for example are highly optimized for strength-to-weight, elasticity, and flexure. The process of natural selection is demonstrably purposeless and non-goal-oriented.<br />
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Intelligent Design is the deliberate arrangement of components or materials to achieve a specific set of performance goals. It typically results in highly simplistic, geometric regular forms, owing in part to the necessity of making things easy to produce, and in part to only simple forms being amenable to manual analytical methods. Cars and bridges represent intelligent design processes.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/94/c6/5f/94c65f9dadbd4ecb7772ac5473977860.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Image result for bird bone section" border="0" height="217" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/94/c6/5f/94c65f9dadbd4ecb7772ac5473977860.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cross-Section of a bird bone</td></tr>
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Post-Intelligent Design (PID) means that the engineer allows unintelligent computer simulations to recursively modify a design to achieve optimal performance, typically the lowest weight or size that achieves a specified strength. It can also refer to self-learning computer algorithms or computer systems that develop their own optimized code or networks. In many ways this is Intelligence-Free Design revisited, but now with purpose and goals which we give it.<br />
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Intelligent design blends smoothly into PID; there is no crisp transitional line. For instance when I design something really critical, I use analytic techniques ranging from paper-and-pencil, formulas & a calculator, right up to 3D FEA on a computer, in order to identify areas that are critically stressed, and areas that are under-stressed. An optimal design under the maximum design load case should be uniformly stressed, indicting that every bit of material is fully contributing to the device's function. I will then remove material from under-stressed areas and add material to over-stressed areas, and do the analysis again. I may even make new material selections (carbon fibre, high-performance alloys etc) to get the required result. This cycle repeats for as much time as I have or until the goals are achieved within a tolerated margin. Post-intelligent Design simply automates this process and gives the computer wider latitude to come up with optimal designs that meet the given constraints and performance goals.<br />
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One of the enabling technologies for PID is 3D Printing. This removes one of the constraints faced by Intelligent Design: the need to make designs in simple geometric figures that are able to be produced in real life.<br />
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The final obstacle to overcome is that 3D-Printable materials are not the highest-performing materials that we have. The relatively poor specific performance of thermoplastics, sintered metals etc is a major problem that makes generative designs that can only be 3D printed actually less useful than intelligent design using simple geometric shapes. Naturally, a lot of smart people are working on exactly that problem.<br />
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In a PID world, it may be that no one person or even group of people knows how a piece of technology works, what certain features are for, or why something looks the way it does. One only knows that it is optimized for a specified purpose. In such a world we become literally the god-like Minds whose values and desires guide and direct the autonomous evolution of a technological ecosystem.<br />
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Also in such a world, it will be possible, easy in fact, to deduce what those values are, since they will be reflected in numerous ways. In that world of our creation, it becomes incredibly important that we decide upon those values and ensure that they are objectively good - by which I mean supportive of our long-term survival and quality of life.<br />
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In the Intelligence-Free natural world, there is absolutely no evidence of any sort of guiding values at work. One can see this in humanity's past. <br />
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The Intelligence-Free universe gave homo sapiens lives that were, to quote Hobbes, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Our happiness and comfort or the "sanctity " of life obviously are not values held by the universe. But at some point around 10,000 years ago, give or take, we developed culturally-transmitted and ever-evolving thinking tools (Dawkins' "Memes") and immediately began Intelligently Designing our lives and our world. Human population then exploded.<br />
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A few hundred years ago, those thinking tools underwent another growth spurt, and Science was born - the meme that suggests that the most powerful and efficient way to determine fact from fiction was to try to disconfirm the hypothesis. Not coincidentally, in that short time not only has humanity completely overrun the planet but individual lives are now twice as long with vastly more interesting things to do and marred by dramatically less suffering. We are no longer nasty, brutish, or short. Well, most of us anyway.<br />
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We did that. We did that ourselves. We did that by Intelligent Design. And now, it may be time for Post-Intelligent Design to step in and take over. But what will our new job be? We get a promotion. We become the ones who decide what is important and what isn't. We need to start taking that job seriously.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-80098398282181555632017-08-09T18:01:00.000+08:002018-02-04T17:07:52.180+08:00I Have Been Evolving<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">A recent article published in BMC Biology presented evidence that 450 million years ago the common ancestor of present-day Spiders and Scorpions experienced a Whole Genome Duplication (WGD). </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">A Whole Genome Duplication is when the offspring of an organism accidentally gets two complete copies of its genome, which its descendants then inherit. While relatively rare, WGD's do occur from time to time, but usually don't lead to anything since by itself it provides no advantage to the individual. However if the double genome hangs around for long enough before going extinct, it can provide twice the opportunity for evolution to test mutations while having a bit of a safety fallback in the form of the duplicate gene. At least I think that's how it works. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This pre-spider WGD seems to have been an advantageous one since probably all spiders and scorpions alive today are descended from it. WGD can essentially confer evolutionary superpowers on a line of organisms, enabling them to diversify rapidly and specialize dramatically. This is certainly true of spiders, of which there are an estimated 46,000 distinct living species, with many more yet to be discovered and classified. If you name any possible way to survive in nature, there's probably a spider that does it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">But that's nothing. We vertebrates had TWO WGD's in our evolution. And look at us - we invented bug spray. Take that, spiders.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I find evolution fascinating. As Francis Crick put it, "Evolution is smarter than you." Using nothing more than lots of time, lots of slightly imperfect gene duplication, and razor-sharp selective pressures, it results in incredibly subtle and clever solutions to the problem of survival. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">T</span></span></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">he turning point in our history was when we Eukaryotes decided it would be fun, instead of simply eating a bacteria, to adopt one as a pet and let it live inside our membrane. That's how we came to have things like chloroplasts, mitochondria, and golgi bodies inside us.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">A similar thing happened to us again about 10,500 years ago when, instead of simply killing and eating an aurochs, we decided to try catching some and keeping them as pets. We would feed them, watch them mate, keep them alive, and then get lots of little baby aurochsen. That is the day we invented Veal. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The lesson in all this is to never do anything <i>exactly </i>the same way always. Change it up a bit. Find what else works.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr_CvugJKhgXfquhIGKZvhh7O6Z0gB_M9JhXailOvy9elGykCn9tigOk2TQ97-ER-VnkmhvmzTpRsjckAN6OzXgB2_LIK_m1DAK4Hpv2S0SZgpPGgZsy94rzj3muFbbuV8RBOIktr4JHU/s1600/tree-of-life_2000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="1600" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr_CvugJKhgXfquhIGKZvhh7O6Z0gB_M9JhXailOvy9elGykCn9tigOk2TQ97-ER-VnkmhvmzTpRsjckAN6OzXgB2_LIK_m1DAK4Hpv2S0SZgpPGgZsy94rzj3muFbbuV8RBOIktr4JHU/s640/tree-of-life_2000.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You Are Here: Humans are a tiny twig on one of the far right hand branches of the tree of life.</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-77404986202298561712017-08-09T12:49:00.001+08:002017-08-09T12:49:32.116+08:00Failure to CommunicateWhat we have here is a failure to communicate. <br />
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When rationalists or humanists talk about Morality, they could be thinking of any number of specific things. <br />
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They might be thinking of how people treat each other generally. They could also be thinking of the decisions or actions we make that could have wider implications, e.g. for the environment or society. <br />
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They might be thinking of one's obligation to protect and educate the young, rather than exploit or neglect them. They could even be thinking that Morality is that same thing applied to the Aged or Disabled. <br />
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Morality is often applied to thinking about the treatment of animals. Morality could even mean the considerations for or against inter-nation conflict, economic policy, trade, or actions taken in response to human rights issues.<br />
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But when you talk to a christian about morality, they are basically thinking of one thing. To a christian, Morality means basically this:<br />
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Not touching yourself.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-47192576987802765052017-06-02T17:15:00.001+08:002017-06-02T17:20:23.665+08:00Twenty-One Questions About God - Answered There is one weird fact that solves every difficult theological problem that has ever been posed. Once you know and understand this one crucial fact, you become a Maser Theologian and can answer every question about God easily and without contradiction.<br />
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1. Is God a male, a female, or a gender-less oozy gastropod of some sort?<br />
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Answer: Neither, because gods aren't actually real things at all. <br />
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2. Did God create evil?<br />
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Answer: No, because gods do not exist. <br />
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3. Will God forgive me?<br />
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Answer: No, because God does not exist. Forgive yourself and try to be a better person.<br />
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4. How is it that God and Jesus are the same being?<br />
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Answer: Because neither of those things exist. Jesus was never a real person, and there never were any gods at all. <br />
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5. Did God create our spirits and give us free will?<br />
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Answer: No, because there never were any gods at all, and the evidence is strongly against the existence of spirits.<br />
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6. Will I meet God when I die?<br />
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Answer: No, because no gods exist, and neither do you after you die. <br />
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7. Does God know everything?<br />
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Answer: No, because the idea of an all-knowing god is a testable proposition that fails on the basis of evidence.<br />
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8. Is God all-powerful?<br />
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Answer: No, because an all-powerful god is a testable proposition that fails due to the proposition being inherently contradictory and therefore absurd and self-negating. <br />
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9. Does God want me to believe in him?<br />
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Answer: No, because there are affirmatively no such beings in existence.<br />
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10. Didn't God give us the bible to tell us that he exists?<br />
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Answer: No, because gods are not real things. The bible is as much a proof of a god as Marvel Comics is proof of a Spiderman.<br />
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11. Did God send the angel Gabriel to instruct Muhammad?<br />
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Answer: No, because there never were any gods or angels at all.<br />
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12. Is not the Pope God's actual representative on the earth? <br />
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Answer: No, because gods are not actually real things that exist.<br />
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13. Which religion is the right one?<br />
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Answer: Religion is wrong. Religion is entirely a wrong thing, period. Religion is a wrong process reaching wrong conclusions, and is full of wrong ideas and wrong people. Religion is wrong about every single thing that makes religion unique.<br />
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14. Did God empower Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt?<br />
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Answer: No, because there are no gods. Also, Moses was a fictional character invented around 700 BC based unimaginatively on half a dozen previous fictional characters and popular stories known from antiquity. <br />
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15. Did God create Adam and Eve?<br />
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Answer: No, because there never were any gods at all. <br />
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16. Does God prefer that we worship on Sunday, or on Saturday? Which is the correct Sabbath?<br />
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Answer: Neither, because god isn't a real thing and worship is a wrong thing to do, being based on demonstrably false assumptions. <br />
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17. Why does it seem like God allows terrible things to happen?<br />
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Answer: Because there is no such thing as gods. You might just as well agonize over why the underpants gnomes are allowing so many bad things to happen.<br />
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18. Does God hear and answer prayers?<br />
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Answer: No, because there never were any gods at all. Also, telepathic communication is disproved bullshit. <br />
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19. Golly gee whiz, I'm pretty sure there is a God. My feelings and my church says so.<br />
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Answer: There isn't. Examine why you think that, and look critically at all the evidence. Lots of people have walked away from those unfounded beliefs once they realized that there was nothing in it. They're just fine, and you will be just fine, too.<br />
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20. But what if you're wrong? Huh?<br />
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So - you're a gambler, are you? Pascal's Wager, is it? OK - let's play that game. Given all the evidence, the probability of any god existing is vanishingly small, and the probability of that god being precisely the one you think it is, is again vanishingly small out of the infinity of all possible gods that might exist. Now then, of all the possible gods, how many would be offended and angry if you guessed the wrong god? Therefore if any gods exist, there is a high probability that you will have disastrously picked the wrong one.<br />
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Or you could just not play silly games of chance and follow the evidence where it leads.<br />
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21. But couldn't there be a something, somewhere, and you can't prove there isn't!<br />
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Is that what you believe in? A vague notion of a "something, somewhere?" A non-interfering god that refrains from modifying the universe in any measurable way so as to remain undetectable? Such a being is indistinguishable from the wholly non-existent, so it makes no difference whether you believe in it or not. <br />
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But all the specific gods, who believers claim must always modify the universe early and often and in specific ways, expose themselves to objective, empirical examination through evidence. All the evidence is concordant with the non-existence of magic, the supernatural, or of gods, devils, spirits, ghosts, fairies, or leprechauns. Most of the evidence directly implicates these facts, while some of the evidence (to which theists cling) merely bears multiple explanations. <br />
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But the simplest explanation that is consistent with all the evidence and which provides the simplest, most believable and coherent answers to all theological questions is that there never were any gods at all. <br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-17372884543562514602016-09-07T18:56:00.001+08:002016-09-07T18:56:50.502+08:00There Is No MagicThere is no magic in the world, in the shed, or anywhere in the less interesting parts of the universe. This universe is governed by natural laws which can, if we try hard enough and have a big enough shed, be found out.<br />
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There are no magic potions, no magic pills, no magic causes or cures for disease. Only Science cures by first understanding the natural causes of disease.<br />
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There are no magic foods, no magic water, no magic stones, no magic crystals, no magic shapes, no magic numbers, no magic places, no magic plants or animals. <br />
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We are not magic. There is no brain-magic, mind-reading, or fortune-telling. There is no magic essence lurking deep within us, and we do not live forever.<br />
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Magic is not needed to explain consciousness, intelligence, or emotions. Science explains these things perfectly well and with immeasurably greater predictive power and elegance.<br />
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There are no magic words. Except for "Abracadabra" and "A-La-Peanut Butter Sandwiches!" Obviously. Words mean only what the hearer believes they mean, and they have no effect on the actual universe other than slightly raising its entropy.<br />
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Existence is not magic. So far, the existence of everything known to be in existence either has a natural explanation or is at least susceptible to ongoing scientific investigation. The existence of Life too does not require or even suggest a supernatural magical explanation, and is perfectly accounted for by entirely natural causes and processes.<br />
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There is no magical guy in the sky. We know there is not, because the various man-made legends of various forms of magic sky-guy are each internally inconsistent and therefore mathematically impossible. We also know this empirically because no evidence has ever been put forward which bears no other explanation than the improbable existence of a magical man in the clouds. Stated another way, every piece of evidence ever collected is either directly against the existence of Sky-Man, or bears other, far more likely natural explanations.<br />
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The idea of secret invisible magic people can also be tested and found to fail every single time. We have no more reason to suspect the existence of an invisible magic man purposefully concealing himself from us than we have to suspect that leprechauns are secretly flapping their ears whenever no one is looking.<br />
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To believe in magic in any form is to reject reason, to deny reality, and to love comfort and lies more than truth. But what is truth? Do you really have to ask? Do you not understand that truth is that which can be shown to be indistinguishable from Reality? That which can be objectively observed, measured and described? Truth is only complicated if you're trying to wrest it and contort it into being associated with something that is unreasonable.<br />
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So what do I believe? I do not believe. Instead, I accept that for which there is adequate evidence. When one does so, there is no need for belief. And there is no need for the lie known as magic.<br />
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Happiness, healing, joy and purpose exist without the aid of any form of magic. Morality exists without magic, more so than with magic, which in many forms attempts to supersede and pervert morality. Meaning and goodness exist without any help from magic, which owing to its being devoid of any truth, more often causes suffering than prevents it.<br />
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Do, tell me why I need magic in my life. Chances are I can make (and have made) your argument better. Certainly I have considered it and found sufficient reason and evidence to dismiss any argument in favour of the nonexistent value of the nonexistent. But if you wish me to consider the nonexistent, then all I ask is evidence.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-18681318412437867402016-03-31T21:51:00.002+08:002016-03-31T21:51:55.657+08:00A Nobel Prize Is Not Enough. . . to make you a fully rational person and protect you from Bullshit Beliefs.<br />
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The following Nobel-Prize-Winning Scientists held bullshit nonsense beliefs in spite of being fairly intelligent people in a specific field:<br />
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Pierre & Marie Curie (Physics, 1903), Lord Raleigh (Physics, 1904), Joseph Thomson (Physics, 1905), Charles Richet (Medicine, 1913), Einstein (Physics, 1921), Otto Stern (Physics, 1943), Wolfgang Pauli (Physics, 1945), Alfred Kastler (Physics, 1966), and Brian Josephson (Physics, 1973) all held superstitious beliefs in various forms of paranormal or psychic bullshit.<br />
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Alexis Carrel (Medicine, 1912), Philipp Lenard (Physics, 1905), William Shockley (Physics, 1966), James Watson (Medicine, 1962), and Konrad Lorenz (Medicine, 1973) all believed in various crank racial theories e.g. white supremacy and related morally reprehensible (as well as scientifically debunked) pig puke.<br />
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Antonio Moniz (Medicine, 1949), Linus Pauling (Chemistry, 1954), Brian Josephson (Physics, 1973), Nikolaas Tinbergen (Medicine, 1973), Louis Ignarro (Medicine, 1998), Luc Montagnier (Medicine, 2008) all believed in various forms of medical quackery, snake oil, crank theories, and general health-related nonsense.<br />
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Even having a Nobel Prize is not enough to save you from Bullshit Beliefs. Only a disciplined focus on rationality, evidence and logic can save you.<br />
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(Source: <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease">http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease</a>)<br />
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One notices that Physics seems to be rather well represented in the bullshit belief brigade. The most likely explanation is Expert Syndrome: the belief that "smart in one field = smart in all fields," an attitude which, by the way, is engendered in budding physicists from their first undergrad days and which leads so many of them astray down spooky, dark and stinky paths (stinky from all the bullshit).<br />
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Medicine is heavily represented in the medical bullshit category, likely a result of the specialist effect: an individual has to be so focused in one area of medicine to distinguish one's self that some other area of medicine may well escape their complete understanding, or apparently even their passing familiarity.<br />
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Objections from the Bleachers:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />"But doesn't that simply indicate that they are using their full brain - creative and rational together?"</blockquote>
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Absolutely not. The two "sides" (not literally sides btw) of a brain work together in concert. Being creative is not enhanced by being illogical, gullible or have debilitating cognitive biases. Creativity works best when paired with an analytically disciplined mind in possession of a large number of facts.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I think it's a laudable quality that even Nobel Prize winners can keep an open mind about their facts possibly being wrong."</blockquote>
<br />Um, no. That's not what's going on here. From the cases I've read about in greater detail, it is clear that it is definitely not the situation that they are "hedging their bets" against the possibility that their "prize-winning" knowledge turns out to be incorrect. Rather, these Bullshit Beliefs are in areas outside the individual's field of expertise. They are almost always hobbies or outside interests in which their irrational beliefs are free to run wild without the constraint of empirically established facts.<br />
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But occasionally smart people have bullshit beliefs within their own field of expertise. Not a Nobel Prize winner or even remotely a candidate, but I once worked with a Physicist who held bullshit beliefs about Relativity Theory being completely wrong and believing in the existence of a Luminiferous Aether. And yes, his job was in a technical sub-specialty in the field of General Relativity. Somehow he had managed to get a PhD in Physics without ever having had a rigorous course in Special Relativity in his life. Also, I suspect he did not really grasp the real nature of scientific endeavor.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Well, then they're doing their best to try to understand some other area they are not familiar with, and accepting the challenge of doing so."</blockquote>
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Again, no. That is not what is happening either. If they applied the same rational approach to, say, paranormal beliefs as they did to their scientific work, they would quickly discover that it is bullshit. <br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b>You see, the Defining Feature of the rational process, aka the scientific method, is that it actively seeks out any data, observation or fact that could disprove its hypotheses. </b></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="color: blue;"><b>By contrast, the hallmark of a Bullshit Belief is that its adherents exclusively seek out only confirmation of their bullshit and willfully ignore all dis-confirming evidence. If you want to know whether a belief is bullshit, just observe how they are going about it.</b></span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Wait - you mean to tell me that Science is about working out a new theory and then trying for the rest of your life to disprove it?"</blockquote>
<br />YES - YOU FINALLY UNDERSTAND SCIENCE!!!! Congratulations! That is exactly how the scientific method works. <br />
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Convincing yourself that something is true is really easy. People do it all the time for all sorts of patent nonsense. Anything whatsoever that the mind is motivated to accept can be "confirmed" by almost anything you experience. Conspiracy theorists do it all the time - everything they see, hear or read confirms the conspiracy for them. <br />
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But only ideas that are so true that they are indistinguishable from the full truth are able to withstand sustained, skillful and determined efforts to disprove them, debunk them, falsify or otherwise discredit them.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-28992210760885932902016-02-25T14:51:00.000+08:002016-02-25T14:51:03.402+08:00Religion Against HumanityFor most of my life I was a devout religious person, but at the same time I was always committed to truth and reason. I felt that if a faith could not withstand exposure to reason, facts, logic and an occasional robust challenge, then it was not worth having in the first place. I was one of those people who felt that Religion and Reason were complementary.<br />
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As time has progressed and as I have had the chance to explore certain facts and ideas more thoroughly, I have changed my mind about Religion and now find myself believing that it is incompatible with Reason. But are we really better off without it?<br />
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Like most religious people I was taught that Religion was the sole source of human morality, and like most religious people I did not question this assumption. Now however, I see things very differently. I have come to the conclusion that Religion is the antithesis of morality. And no, this is not merely an ad-hoc justification for sleeping in on Sunday, but a conclusion forced upon me by logic and empirical observation. To understand how this can be in any way a logical, reasonable conclusion, consider the following arguments.<br />
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Suffering. The nature of suffering is that it is not a vector quantity, but a scalar amplitude. In plain English, this means suffering cannot be offset or reduced by something else: it has no opposite, no negative quantity, no "antisuffering." This means that no amount of joy, for example, experienced today will diminish or offset some suffering you may experience tomorrow. One individual's happiness does not count against another's suffering when the total amount of suffering in a community is being weighed. Suffering in one nation is not nullified by another nation's simultaneous prosperity.<br />
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No, the only way for the rate of suffering to be reduced is for it to fail to be created. We fail to create suffering either by our omissions (things we don't do) or by our commissions (things we do). Whose suffering? What suffering? I refer to one's own suffering, that of others around us, or the general degradation of the living environment or quality of life.<br />
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Morality. A moral person is one who deliberately fails to create suffering by his omissions. In other words he intentionally refrains from acts that can reasonably be expected to lead to suffering in himself or others, with others given priority. "The needs of the many" etc. A moral person also fails to create suffering through his deliberate acts. He intentionally commits acts that can reasonably be expected to lead to the avoidance or discontinuation of suffering. A moral act is thus objectively defined as one which raises the quality of life, leads to an avoidance or discontinuation of personal suffering, and is reasonably expected (barring accidents or unforeseeable consequences) to not directly result in suffering. And if you need a further definition of suffering in order to understand what it is, then don't worry about it - it won't do you any good.<br />
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A moral person is therefore chiefly concerned with the direct consequences of his actions or inactions, both short-term and long term, and he makes choices by e<i>valu</i>ating - that is, applying a <i>value </i>system to - the available actions relative to the effects of those actions on himself, on others, and on the quality of life in his environment.<br />
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An immoral person, by contrast, is mainly concerned with his short and long-term gain in any choice considered. How it affects others, how it affects the living or social environment, or even how it affects his own well-being is at best a secondary consideration. <br />
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Religion. After fifty years of studying and practicing religion I have come to the following conclusion: Religion teaches people to be immoral. It teaches us to consider only our long-term gain (specifically, post-mortality) in any situation, and not to consider either our own well-being, that of others, or that of the environment. It teaches that to be devout, we must have no other consideration in the choices we make other than adhering to a set of arbitrary rules purportedly given by a silent, invisible deity. Through Religion, it is possible to ignore or even cause significant suffering if there is any conflict between religiously prescribed acts and those acts I define as moral, i.e. that might diminish suffering. In any such collision, every religion I have encountered requires you to put absolute devotion to the religion ahead of what a moral person would do having never heard of religion.<br />
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Essentially, Religion teaches people to think only about themselves and about their own reward or punishment at a time and place that remains entirely hypothetical. The objection raised here by the keepers of religion and its apologists is that Religion starts with essentially selfish humans and teaches them to be not quite so selfish by appealing to their natural self-interest in a carrot-and-stick system of incentives. Follow our rules, you get the carrot; don't follow them, you get the stick. This argument assumes that in essence every human is a sociopath unless and until they get Religion. <br />
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This defense of Religion falls apart by considering that sociopaths usually only pretend to be religious while remaining complete sociopaths. Consider that atheists represent only 0.07% of those incarcerated in the US prison system - the largest prison system in the world. Also consider the following two words that have no business even being together: paedophile priests. And consider the verifiable observation that normal people are naturally empathetic and moral, with sociopathy and psychopathy being relatively rare exceptions in the population, with or without religion. <br />
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Another defense of religion that apologists will be thinking right about now is the window-dressing of "feed the poor, heal the sick" that many religions include in their programs. "We tell people that if they don't give money to us for charity then they will certainly go to hell." While I may be guilty of straw-manning religion here, it's only a little bit, and it is needed to point out the essential problem. What is the motivation offered by religion? To do the right thing because it reduces suffering? Or to do whatever you're told in order to advance your own self-interest? When it's something as obviously good and valuable as alleviating the suffering of the poor, it's easy to comply. Then when people get used to doing whatever they're told to do, it's easy enough to replace one thing with something entirely different.<br />
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A side-effect of charity-by-extortion is that it provides an incentive to maintain a population of impoverished, disenfranchised people upon whom we can bestow our points-earning charity. There are even various sick, perverse religious theories relating to scapegoats, "victim souls" or "God's Will" to justify the existence of poverty and suffering. If combating poverty were the aim instead of getting to heaven, things might be done differently that rather than perpetuate poverty would meaningfully address the underlying causes. <br />
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The other problem with charity as a justification of religion (other than the obvious fact that charity and relief aid can and do exist in the total absence of religion) is that it can be and often is used as an ideological weapon. This happens every time a religious aid organization places conditions on how or where the aid is distributed, or uses it to score political points. One famous church that rhymes with "bath lick" uses its aid money and its global might to aggressively push a no-contraception agenda in countries that desperately need contraception as a means to address wholesale suffering and poverty. A true cynic would suggest that this is their strategy for ensuring they have ongoing membership growth. An even worse cynic would say this completely illogical policy ensures that there will be plenty of children for the priests to rape. <br />
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In the last million years as a species, we humans have evolved physically only superficially (for example some of us have turned an abnormal pasty white, a temporary aberration likely to disappear in a few thousand years). By contrast, our software has evolved considerably. Ideas have developed which allow individuals to experience long lives marred by significantly less suffering. <br />
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If this species is going to exist for another million years, it will be due to our minds evolving further still. We will consciously choose to condition our behaviour to voluntarily limit our population, to limit violence and destructive emotions, and to place greater social value on reason, science, logic and morality. The immoral self-interest of religion, of doing things strictly on the basis of reward or punishment by an imaginary agent in an imaginary after-life, and the inherent inter-tribal distrust and violence that religion promotes, has no place in a sustainable future for humankind.<br />
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And so we face the ultimate question of morality. Do we immorally and selfishly cling to belief systems that feed our egos and desires, or do we take the moral and more difficult high road of throwing off our past superstitious, destructive conditioning to ensure a future for this species?<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-84910170107144840912015-09-24T14:58:00.004+08:002015-09-24T15:10:26.552+08:00Why VW Was RightVolkswagen Group made a deliberate, calculated decision to make cars that were more fuel efficient, better performing and better for the environment at the expense of taking liberties with ill-conceived and somewhat arbitrary emissions standards.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0z66U-AE9TeiNxx26SgPeC53zyQMtBaCZUwvCsCwzaaeZ-sVl4_aHyOdlZmowkVunSgmEGOYcxcOzyP6Oo1hUPLRn7kwBcTjaGxRalcXs4MMOfcOqFJMac6WqRkUWKtsxc9y286M2X94/s1600/volkswagen-golf-r-front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0z66U-AE9TeiNxx26SgPeC53zyQMtBaCZUwvCsCwzaaeZ-sVl4_aHyOdlZmowkVunSgmEGOYcxcOzyP6Oo1hUPLRn7kwBcTjaGxRalcXs4MMOfcOqFJMac6WqRkUWKtsxc9y286M2X94/s320/volkswagen-golf-r-front.jpg" width="320" /></a>In the end, I expect they will be exonerated for considering the long-term greater good even at short-term disadvantage to themselves.<br />
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A diesel engine operates fundamentally differently to a spark-ignition engine. Diesel engines require very high pressure in the combustion chamber, and consequently very high combustion temperatures. This enables them to be more fuel efficient and cleaner-burning than gasoline/petrol engines while producing more torque at lower RPMs. That means that a given vehicle with a diesel engine can go further faster on less fuel with less CO2 emissions than the same vehicle with a gasoline/petrol engine. Add a turbocharger and it gets even better: the engine can be smaller and lighter, meaning the vehicle chassis can be smaller and lighter, less steel is required (meaning less lifecycle CO2 burden) and fuel consumption falls even further, as do direct CO2 emissions.<br />
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However the higher combustion temperature comes with a sting. Air is only 21% oxygen, the component required to burn fuel and release the stored energy therein. The rest is mostly nitrogen (78%). And at high temperatures, fuel isn't the only thing burning. Nitrogen burns, too, and produces oxides of nitrogen, NO and NO2, collectively called NOx. (Not to be confused with N2O, also sometimes called "nitrous" or "NOX.")<br />
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NOx can contribute to smog and acid rain, is a short-lived greenhouse gas, and ends up contributing to nitrogen content of soils and waterways. While it is therefore undesirable on the whole, it is not the worst thing ever. There are much worse things, which we will get to in a moment.<br />
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In order to reduce NOx emissions, the combustion temperature must be kept in check. In a diesel engine this has the direct effect that cylinder pressure is also proportionately reduced, and therefore torque output is reduced, and therefore power is reduced, and therefore efficiency is reduced. Also, fuel combustion can be negatively impacted by lower temperature, resulting in more soot, more un-burned hydrocarbons (HCs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) coming out the tailpipe. Lower efficiency and lower specific power means higher fuel consumption and higher CO2 emissions. <br />
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Hydrocarbon emissions and VOCs can have direct adverse effects on human health. NOx emissions on the other hand have only indirect effects, as a part contributing factor to smog (the main factors being ozone, particulates and coal-fired power plants). NOx also contributes to acid rain, but there again the main culprit and more dangerous one is sulfur compounds emitted by coal-fired power plants.<br />
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While NOx can be a short-lived greenhouse gas, CO2 is by far the greater long-term threat, because it persists in the atmosphere forever and ever, or until absorbed by a plant. Or deliberately captured and stored by humans at considerable monetary and energy cost.<br />
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Therefore, when striking the balance between NOx and the far worse HCs, VOCs, and CO2, what should we do? What should Volkswagen have done? I am convinced that VW did the right thing. This episode will undoubtedly draw attention to the current incorrect balance in emission standards, and prompt a re-evaluation and rationalization of them. Perhaps different emission standards for diesel and gasoline/petrol vehicles would be appropriate. <br />
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On the whole, small efficient diesel cars are better for the environment. The fact that they are now being made imminently drive-able by innovative carmakers like VW makes them more attractive and promotes their widespread acceptance. This is a good thing, and VW was undoubtedly considering the greater good when they unilaterally decided that a bit of NOx was a small price to pay for the significant benefits to human health and the environment of better fuel efficiency and lower HC/VOC emissions. Way to go, Volkswagen! Keep it up.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1219943390209086498.post-74789491467391718252015-07-09T18:03:00.001+08:002015-07-14T09:32:43.974+08:00What Is Religious Freedom?<h4>
Congratulations on your religious liberty! Here is what you've won:</h4>
<ul>
<li>You have the right to believe any damn thing you want in the privacy of your own mind, regardless of how absurd it is, how far removed from reality and provable fact, or how anathema to morality and ethics it may be. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> um . . . that's . . . pretty much it, I'm afraid.</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiNmfk75BGrqWH7Mo1nRU9RTXbL653f9-ZS93SnrwYYQr5tNy7CTtd7gi4BNFhmNESx6lkVzvPS4cb-kkcEnu0gCwlCo52jiD_5S1TAU3u8x-nNVPuMV_1O1cApWidhNpJ6EC8qp2-5Q/s1600/southpark-bestfriends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiNmfk75BGrqWH7Mo1nRU9RTXbL653f9-ZS93SnrwYYQr5tNy7CTtd7gi4BNFhmNESx6lkVzvPS4cb-kkcEnu0gCwlCo52jiD_5S1TAU3u8x-nNVPuMV_1O1cApWidhNpJ6EC8qp2-5Q/s320/southpark-bestfriends.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
Please note that religious freedom does not grant you any of the following:</h4>
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<ul>
<li>The right to go to church. This is not a guaranteed right for anybody. However, you may exercise this privilege in certain cases, provided that you first work hard and buy a goddamned car. It's what everyone knows they ought to do, because it's simply the right thing to do (according to Saint Jeremy of Clarkson).</li>
<li>The right to impose your beliefs on others. Even if God tells you it's ok, it's still not actually ok. Refer to the "golden rule." (God sometimes forgets that he issued that one, so help him out once in a while.) </li>
<li>Your beliefs enshrined in legislation. Larceny was made illegal not because it is a "sin," but because it is a gross trespass upon the right of an individual to retain his lawful property. Good government does not pass laws or create policy on the basis of religious belief. The ten commandments never were the basis of modern jurisprudence, nor can they ever be.</li>
<li>The right to break laws you don't believe in. Break them you may, but "religious belief" is never a valid defense and you will be fully culpable for any penalties that your wicked lawbreaking incurs. </li>
<li>The right to be insufferable. Golden rule, again!</li>
<li>The right to judge and discriminate against those who do not share your private beliefs. If "religion" is your reason for doing shit like this, then man do you have some fucked-up ideas about what religion is supposed to be for. And you wonder why religion is in general decline in the world. </li>
<li>The right to express your religion publicly. Most of the time you will not be materially impeded in this regard, but in cases of e.g. school dress & jewelry policies, you could be prevented from displaying your idolatrous religious iconography. Where security and identity are a concern, the State has the right to require you to remove coverings over your face, even if your religion prohibits this.</li>
<li>The right to murder small children. You're thinking, "WTF?" No, this actually happens quite a lot, sadly. Certain religious people do this by attempting to deny life-saving medical treatment to children on the basis of their bizarre and easily disprovable religious theories. This is child abuse and is against the law for very good reasons. Religious freedom, they say, makes it ok; but they are lying. It is not ok.</li>
<li>The right to over-populate the planet. Why are some religious people still going around the world telling poor people not to use contraception? This is evil. I oppose the practice of not using contraception at all times. One should only have children when one can guarantee their adequate provision and if one is capable of being a suitable parent. </li>
</ul>
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Enjoy your one (1) religious freedom! </div>
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UPDATE: The Masses Respond<br />
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<i>"I'm a religious American, and that alone gives me the following Special Rights you forgot to mention.</i><br />
<i>1. The Right to tell as many people as possible about my totally awesome beliefs.</i><br />
<i>2. The Right not to be criticized, persecuted or ridiculed in any way for my beliefs while telling everyone about them.</i><br />
<i>3.The Right to PRACTICE my religious expression at any time and in any place that my religion requires me to."</i><br />
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Ahem, no. The things you mention are not Rights, but Freedoms, some of which do not actually exist (see below). Also, any freedoms you have are not extended just to religious people of the favored faith, but to anyone and everyone no matter what they believe or don't believe. <br />
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1. <i>The right to tell everyone about your religion.</i> You have the freedom of free speech to say what you want within certain limits (e.g. "fire in a theater" limits.) But the legislature is also free to restrict nuisance activities or speech that is causing problems. Just because your message is religious in nature does not give it special priority over any other form of speech. This is because the law cannot properly determine what is religious speech and what isn't. One cannot allow "hate" speech or inciting to violence just because someone somewhere claims it is their religious belief. Therefore all speech must be evaluated equally and have the same limits without special regard as to whether it is religious in nature or not.<br />
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2. <i>The right for you not be criticized for your beliefs.</i> Never. If you say something in the public space, you do so with the understanding and acceptance that anything you say can and will be stress-tested to the limit. You can and will be criticized (fairly or not), ridiculed (deservedly or not), and required to defend your statements. That is the agreement. Deal with it. There is no special "protection" for religious claims, and no one ever anywhere in the history of everything has ever promised you freedom from criticism. That is simply not a thing that exists. So, in other words, No. The only place you can expect to never be ridiculed for the things you believe is inside your own mind, and so that is the best place to keep your beliefs.<br />
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3. <i>The right to religious expression</i>. In a free society with true religious liberty (if such a place existed), the law cannot and must not distinguish between one subjective belief and another. Therefore there is nothing to prevent people from claiming religious belief for almost anything whatsoever that they may wish to do. You may be in a fortunate special case for which almost all (probably all) of your religious observances involve perfectly legal activities that are appropriate for their time and place. But this is not the general case of all possible beliefs and observances that could potentially exist. Therefore - which would you say ought to take precedence? A person's subjective beliefs and whims? Or the objective law of the land? Of course it has to be the law that takes precedence so that people don't do things like murder small children out of a silly religious antipathy for medicine, ritualistically mutilate small furry animals, or embezzle money out of a sincere religious conviction that god wants them to have the money.<br />
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But if you try to compromise and bestow special privilege upon one religion deemed to have "acceptable" practices, while prohibiting religious beliefs that the law deems "unacceptable," then you no longer have any true religious liberty at all. It has been completely done away with. You really do have to treat all religions equally if you are to have religious liberty. In other words, true religious liberty depends on the law having no opinion of what is religion and what isn't.<br />
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You do not have the right to practice or express your religious observances anywhere, anytime. All your acts whether religious or not will either comply with the law or be subject to its consequences. You have the freedom to try to practice your religion, but society and the government are not required to let you do anything whatsoever, do not need to help you do it, nor are they required to assure you succeed in everything you want. <br />
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There is a difference between rights and freedoms. You are often <i>free </i>to try to get your way, but you do not have the <i>right </i>to always get your way. The one right you do have that cannot be taken from you is the right to believe any damn thing you want in the privacy of your own personal brain. And that truly is the limit of your religious rights.<br />
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<br />John S. Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07136673809517474111noreply@blogger.com0