Prometheus

I only looked at the second paper - the one explaining local FDR. I have a little familiarity with FDRs but never heard of local FDR. If i get the chance i'll take the time to look at the first paper and see if i can apply my understanding to it. In normal times i would just ask one of my colleagues... haven't seen them for months now.

These themes are explored in the Dice Man. Good book. I find these ideas are better explored in narrative form. That's because i'm not so sure about myself. I suspect that the reductionist approach has its limits at that point new behaviors emerge from simpler antecedents. If consciousness is an emergent behaviour then i don't think a reductionist approach is the best way to think about free will. But i'm not sure what the best approach is - Eise offers a compelling alternative, but i'm deliberately sceptical as it contains an emotional draw for me. I'm not sure how useful this distinction between internal and external forcing is - brain processes are as much a part of the universe as anything 'external'. However, if by internal we simply mean those processes which i call me by convention i can see some utility - though the boundary becomes blurry when we consider that our gut micrbiome influences neural processes, as do social interactions, our environment etc... May i ask, since this is the religion forum, if you're position on free will mirrors that of the Buddhist concept of self: a useful concept for everyday life, but there is no True Self that somehow sits outside the universe upon the throne of decision making. If we accept a deterministic universe (which i think all parties here do?), then in what sense could we say that humans have free will and that some AI in the future could not? AI, even today, can act in ways that are not explicitly coded. It may have a utility function which it seeks to minimise, but it is 'free' to find any means to this end. Identical AI agents can easily converge to different solutions if they are learning agents - the data inputs help them navigate the landscape of all possible actions they could perform, and even slightly different data could lead to a divergence of behaviour. The difference between them would lie in the accumulated weights of their neural networks rather than their code.

My interpretation of the local FDR from that paper you gave is; given a p-value what is the probability that the null hypothesis is true, adjusted to take into account all the pairwise hypothesis tests in the set. But there are lots of nuances in that paper which would take a while to pick apart. It seems to rely on the independence of the p-values to estimate some of its properties though - is that a reasonable assumption for these kinds of genetic studies?

Mathematica uses this exact sequence as a random number generator for large integers. Does that mean it's truly random? I guess that's a question for the philosophy of maths and above my pay grade. But it's certainly impossible to predict - else the prize would have been claimed and Mathematica would have to stop using it as a random number generator. In terms of free will i'm not sure how a stochastic system offers a better solution than a determined one. That we can't predict an outcome doesn't imply free will (though if we could predict an outcome, that would seem to eradicate free will). If you made all your life decisions by the roll of a die would you say you are exercising free will?

Even with remarkably simple iterative systems like cellular automata rule 30 it is still unknown whether the central column is 'randomly' distributed - there is a prize for working out the value of the nth central column without having to run all n iterations - or prove that it is not possible.

And if Elk can just up and move, what's stopping the Africans? If Europeans think immigration is an issue now...

I disagree that this is necessarily true - though i'm sure it is sometimes, maybe often, the case. Iff religious beliefs make an empirical statement that clash with the evidence then sure there will be dissonance. Then there will always be evidence gaps in which people can ferret certain beliefs which avoids this dissonance. But if religious beliefs make no such empirical claims then they can be entirely consistent with science. Another way of stating this is that religion (could) deal with the world as we experience it, science as the world is. Or that God does exist - as a human concept (and no less important for being so).

Thinking for yourself is the game here. If you want to be told what to think you probably want a creationist forum - i'm sure they'll be happy to tell you what you should believe.

Only some of those religions pray or have a god.

Frankly, i'm very annoyed you made waste my time clicking that link. Regression to the mean is a PC concept, indeed. Taking this 'immigration destroys everything' stance to assessing the evidence is as useful as taking an 'immigration brings nothing but benefits' stance. It's a real shame because immigration is an important topic for many people, as shown by various referenda around the world.

There's no goal to (some) meditation either - sometimes its described as just whole-hearted sitting. The only distinction between inhalation and exhalation made is the distinction your mind makes. Whether it's a rabbit hole or not depends on who's teaching it. One thing you notice with this kind of meditation is that each breath feels just a little bit different, and if it's different between breathes for the same person, then i'm sure it's different between people. But from my experience of meditation i think anapanasati is the closest thing you'll find to what you describe. Nose and navel are common foci you could try the neck, the throat, the chest - there's no end to the fun. Happy breathing.

Anapanasati meditation.

This channel gives a broad overview. Depends how deep you want to go with this it though.

OK, i missed your point then. Everyone likes a bit of Conan though.

I think your are getting Satanism wrong. They are generally a nice bunch, with a philosophy of striving to be the best they can be (unconstrained by God), most without harming others (they are a diverse bunch though). I think only a few Satanic sects actually believe in Satan as pure evil and want to bring death to the world, mainly in America for some reason.

Somewhat ironically that is the premise of many Satanic sects.

I meant specifically for recommending research papers to academics in a similar way that youtube videos, or whatever, are recommended (your link doesn't seem to address this, at least in the abstract). I was thinking of something more like this.

I wonder if it's Sam Harris - i've heard of him talking about morality as an optimisation process.

I wonder if machine learning could be leveraged to help academics with this problem - it's scary how well youtube algorithms know me. I think ResearchGate but it doesn't seem too sophisticated.

Simple models utilising game theory show that 'social' strategies can be a part of the optimisation strategy over an entire population. There is no reason to a priori rule it out as a viable strategy - you'd need some evidence for that. This video explains it quite well:

He's not the anti-christ - he's a very naughty boy.

Morality isn't a static thing - it's a living, breathing phenomenon - evidenced by the fact we now frown upon many practices considered tolerable many moons ago. But it only develops where there is a dialogue. Religious books are an important part of that dialogue, perhaps more so in the past. An eye for an eye might make the world blind, but at the time it was improvement on 'your families life for an eye.' The problem with religious books is that they can become a monologue when they insist upon themselves as the only valid authority. The minute you think any text is the definitive version morality dies. The problem with ignoring the fact that religious books are still part of the dialogue is that you ignore the historical and cultural processes that led us to our current understanding, and, perhaps more importantly, you exclude billions of voices from the dialogue.

Khan academy made a video giving a good explanation of how estimates are made:

Well the papers above were all for users of phones themselves - i.e. you need the phone glued to your ear. There was nothing looking at the more general environment - but if the effect size was small for the users themselves then it's going to be even smaller for for someone at any distance.