Cethin

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  • 209 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    Idk why that is so hard for you to even ponder

    I can obviously ponder it. I've shown that. It's just that there's no reason to believe it's any more real than Harry Potter is. It may make you feel nice, but it doesn't do anything. If consciousness can't be defined by whoever is positing the idea then it's not useful to consider.

    So string theory isn't science either show me where string theory has been proven in any sort of way

    String theory is not really, no. It's theoretical physics. There are experiments that were designed to test it and they all have failed. String theory is a useful mathematical model to predict some results, but it's not more than that. It's also almost certainly wrong, but it can still be useful. It's also almost certainly wrong, because it fails to make new predictions that come true. It can just adapt to give the correct result after we know what it should be. It's useful, but it doesn't make it true.



  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    How? Science is based on making models from empirical observations about the world and yourself

    Science requires falsafiability. It's fine to belive other things, but science it a method, not a belief system.

    one of these empirical observations is the observation that your phenomenal consciousness actually exists, seemingly in opposition to the physical world, maybe we should perhaps include that fact in our models?

    Nothing I've seen seems to imply it's outside of our models. You haven't explained why that's the case. We know how the humans brain and nervous system functions. It isn't magic anymore.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    the same consciousness that doesn't really fit anywhere in our purely quantitative descriptions of the universe.

    How does it not fit in our quantitative descriptions? We can measure its activity. It behaves differently when in a coma, or when thinking about different things, or when dead. We can grow neurons and form connections with them outside the brain to do computations. We can't make anything as complex as the brain yet obviously, but we understand how it functions. What part of it doesn't fit in a perfectly quantitative description.

    I'd love for some mystical thing to exist, but literally every mystical thing people have believed for tens of thousands of years has been wrong. Why should we expect any different here? Lightning isn't caused by spirits in the mountains dancing, a god throwing lightning bolts, or anything else mystical. We can't fully describe the mechanisms at work perfectly, but that doesn't mean we don't understand it. We could assume it's something mystical into the gaps because it sounds cool, but theres no reason to think it isn't something material that can be learned.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    edit-2
    5 months ago

    You aren't conscious when you're in a coma, correct? That's a measurable way the system can mess up and we can detect. You also aren't conscious when you're dead, right? Yet another measurable thing. We can detect brain activity and see certain regions are used for certain things. We can also detect anomalous behavior in the brain. We can tell when the system isn't working as expected.

    Nobody has anywhere near a coherent account of how a purely physical system produces (or equates to) subjective conscious experience.

    We can easily explain how a physical system produces consciousness. We may not be able to point to exactly what it is, but we can describe it and describe how that can happen. It's not mystical. It's just complex. We can't reproduce it yet, but that doesn't mean we don't understand how the brain functions.

    Why should science be forever married to a reductive physicalist account of the universe?

    Because that's literally a basic requirment of science. It relies on falsafiability. You can believe whatever you want, but science relies on stuff being measurable. It doesn't mean it's right, but that's how it functions.

    Also, you call it reductive. I don't think it's reductive. I think it's more reductive to just say "consciousness exists" than to say "consciousness is a complex system that can develop in nature". Just because it's physical doesn't mean it's reductive. Saying "it just is because it is" seems much more reductive.

    Edit: Also, despite people believing mystical things for most of history, they were never right. Why should this be any different?



  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    Sure, it leaves space for anything. It leaves space for (any) God. It doesn't make it useful to consider it though. There are literally an infinite number of things we could make up to explain it, but that doesn't make them equally likely. The most likely is the one that doesn't require strange assumptions, like the universe caring about consciousness, or that particles are conscious like another person said, or the hand of God literally reaching in to set the states exactly himself. Some hypotheses shouldn't be entertained because they require so many strange assumptions they're essentially useless and just a waste of time.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    Why it's weird is because it's assuming the universe is choosing what level is conscious. As you say, we're pretty sure they're conscious. How do we know that? Brain scans and watching their behavior. What happens to something without a brain but still with sensors? Is that somehow conscious? What about a brain but much less complex? Why is the universe deciding how to behave based on this? It'd be really outlandish to expect this behavior from the universe, which isn't a creature and just following a set of rules.

    It's a much simpler explanation that interactions that require information force that information to collapse. We don't need any strange justifications or anything deciding what level becomes conscious, which is just a word we made up several hundred years ago and is meaningless to the universe. Consciousness is just a series of impulses in a system, a system which can go wrong in many ways and is not a fundamental thing.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    edit-2
    5 months ago

    What does it even mean for particles to have consciousness? What would that even mean for that term anymore? How can they be conscious without any ability to think? If you stretch it to particles (so essentially everything) to just say they interact with things, then the term is meaningless.

    It's similar to the god of the gaps argument. You can always push an idea into further unknowns when previous beliefs are disproven. Just because the thing that's left can't be disproven doesn't mean it's any more valid. I can make up any number of equally valid hypotheses that cant be tested, but I don't expect you to entertain them. We don't entertain the idea that the majority of gods exist (or, in many of our cases, any of them). If we took the time to entertain every possible idea we could have we'd sit around all day and do nothing else. There's literally infinite ways to explain this if you allow every supernatural explanation in.

    you can check out for data that I posted on another comment as well

    Data means facts and statistics, not just people talking about things. The data we have is things like the double slit experiment. You can have different hypotheses to explain the data, but hypotheses themselves aren't data. Also, pedantic, but a theory is something that's been tested and withstood scrutiny, and a hypothesis is a potential explanation that hasn't withstood scrutiny yet).

    Edit: I was going to check out the "Ted Talk" you linked, but it's the same two hour podcast, not a Ted Talk. That word also has a meaning, and it isn't that. I may put it on in the background, but you really seem to be (purposefully?) using words incorrectly. If it is on purpose, please stop. It only works to slow things down.

    Edit 2: This guy's definition of an observer (which he also seems to think of as conscious and undefined in QM, but it is defined an has nothing to do with consciousness) in the video is a step in a Markov chain which is dependent on previous results, which is the definition of a Markov chain. He's also seemingly implying a Markov chain is something fundamental, but it's no more fundamental than any other statistical model of events.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    edit-2
    5 months ago

    There's no way to prove that any god(s) exist or not either. It doesn't mean we should waste our time with their explanations. The hand of God could be reaching down to set things up just in time for us to see them and that's exactly as reasonable of an explanation as the universe is aware we're conscious so sets things up just in time for us to see them. The explanation that requires adding the least number of new things is that interactions cause a collapse of the waveform and it happens then, not waiting for a "conscious" observer.

    If the conscious observer thing were true, what would it decide is consciousness? Would it require sapience? Sentience? Does it happen for dolphins? Apes? Monkeys? Mice? Tardigrades? What level of synapse connections is it waiting for to decide that's enough? What about humans born without a brain? Can they not see anything? This hypothesis requires so many weird assumptions that it's less than useless. A god existing makes more sense.

    Edit: Also, you can't explore this "data" because it's literally impossible to collect information on if you assume it exists. There's nothing to explore. I guess you can entertain the idea and ask what you'd do differently if you assume it's true, but I'm betting that's literally nothing. It's the same issue as the "universe is a simulation" hypothesis. It's unprovable and untestable, and the only thing to do with it is assume it isn't true and keep living life as if it's real.

    Science requires testable and verifiable hypothesis. If they can't be falsified they aren't a part of science. They're a belief system. That's fine to have, but don't mix it with science. All you'll do is end up not accepting more data as we learn it because you're filtering it through faith.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    Use a computer? I guess you could say it all collapses when an actual consciousness checks what state things are at, but that'd be a rediculous claim to make. This is where Occam's Razor is useful. Why introduce a concept of a consciousness being required when it would function identically but be significantly stranger and more complex?

    What is consciousness to the universe anyway? It's nothing but a system of electrical impulses, and there no reason to think there's anything physically special about it. It's just an interesting phenomenon that happened, but fundamentally it isn't anything special.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    Yeah, except we can do this experiment without ant consciousness aware of it even and it gets the same results. The only thing that matters is if the particle has to interact with something, because when it does it becomes a specific particle rather than a waveform. What that interaction is with does not effect the experiment in the slightest. A consciousness does not have any effect on the results of the experiment so there's no reason to expect that the universe cares about consciousness. To the universe, consciousness is yet just another series of interaction of things that behave the same as anything else, except it happens in a pattern that we think of as thought.


  • Cethin@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzdouble slit
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    5 months ago

    Consciousness has literally nothing to do with it. In fact, the experiment as demonstrated in this emem would not replicate the double slit results. What has to happen is something along the path has to interfere with the photon (aka observe, which has nothing to do with consciousness, rather just an interaction), which causes the waveform to collapse. Basically, if something needs to know the state, the state collapses into one result. It doesn't matter what that thing is.