cladking

I do understand that human behavior and belief is quite complex and really no less so than that of nature and animals. I also realize that human behavior is a product of will rather than merely happenstance and it's quite easy to see the hand of another power in it and in the behavior of nature itself. This merely isn't my point. My point is that every event of even the tiniest scale has a virtually infinite number of outcomes and each of these outcomes would govern everything in reality given sufficient time. They affect everything in reality even in the briefest possible time. Nothing can be pre-ordained even in a deterministic universe and we know that the universe is no clock-work.

No. I doubt it's even as many things as the possible trajectories of a particle. Most of the things we "know" about people and ourselves aren't even true so not relevant to my point. Reality is far more complex than even "infinity" for all practical purposes and it's doubtful anything can exist in infinite number. It is merely a mathematical concept that seems to be misapplied in most instances. All mathematical concepts in each instance are misapplied to the real world to a greater or lesser extent. Reality is not mathematical, it is logical.

I don't understand the question. Are you asking if I believe that people introduce a lot of new complexity? If so then I'd have to say "no". People are no more complex than any other life form though of course we often do things on a far grander scale and some understanding of the consequences. Individually people can be easy to predict in the short term but collectively we are very hard to predict especially in the longer term.

Government and business are the worst offenders and this will become increasingly obvious until we are controlled and monitored continuously.

I think a lot of problem with science is that it's presented to the public as a belief system in many cases. This is largely the result of the failure of the educational system. As a belief system it does not provide the solace and comfort of a religion and it denies the existence of an original cause making it difficult to comprehend. Largely these are metaphysical and education of metaphysics problems. People are told things are "settled science" that are obviously not and are presented a view of reality that is inconsistent with their experience. I'm not sure supplanting a belief in "God" with a believe in "science" is necessarily a good thing and it is no doubt a bad thing for some individuals. If you want the crazy ideas to disappear then fix education but this will need to include fixing the way science is taught especially in the lower grades.

I don't see how pi having a set but probably unknowable value is proof of infinity. Let's get back to the collisions of atoms. You believe there are an infinite number of possible results and trajectories from such a collision but the reality is this collision occurs in the real world where it is affected by every other thing in the universe through gravity and electromagetic forces. This implies there are only specific angles and trajectories possible; an exceedingly large number but not "infinity". Pi is a specific number and may simply be like one of those specific possible trajectories.

If you postulate that there exist ape-like gremlins that can access the wings of a plane at 20,000' to cause damage they do not suddenly spring into existence. If someone believes in these gremlins and breaks out a window to shoot at what he sees it isn't the result of gremlins but the belief in gremlins. This becomes an effect of language and not reality itself. Some things that can't be found aren't really lost and can only be seen when you're seareching for something else. The world is an "infinitely" complex place with a very fine line between what we believe is real and what actually is. But there is no fine line between the real and the not real. Everything exists and nothing does not exist. Things that do not exist can have no effect in the real world and even the tiniest events in the real world reverberate through time. Math does not exist but it follows the same natural logic that governs how things exist and change in time. This is hardly impossible. But so far centuries of progress and experimental results simply show there are ever more orders of magnitude in the possibilities of the outcome of events. Perhaps like "pi" we'll just find we'll never get to the end.

Your calling the idea that we know almost nothing as being "pessimistic" very much makes my point. I'd estimate our total knowledge at about the tiniest fraction of 1% of everything there is to know. Most people estimate our knowledge much closer to 100%. I'd consider any estimate over .05% as being far out of touch with reality; so far out of touch I suspect we must be talking about completely different things. It's not logical to suggest infinity exists because it's in our models. This is like saying Timbukthree exists because it's on some map. While models reflect reality they can only reflect that reality that appears in experiment. We can never know that the reflection is an accurate reflection because perspective influences interpretation and model creation. Surgeons in the 1850's knew time was of the essence in saving lives after traumatic injury so didn't take the time to wash their hands and equipment and their patients died even though their model was quite accurate. Isn't stating that there is a continuum of such states tantamount to suggesting there are (is) an infinite number? I think your question merely highlights just how little we actually know. I think the question of the existence of reality here and in Studiot's post demonstrate just how far divorced scientific thought has become from reality. I mentioned earlier how a variable pot doesn't really have an infinite number of resistances. I think this might apply as well to the states of electrons or how two particles collide. It would hardly be surprising if there are quantum states for everything and hence a limited though exceedingly large number of outcomes for any event at all. Chaos theory goes on to tell us no event is too small to not affect things in the large scale in the long term. This is what I mean by the statistical "impossibility" of reality itself. Somewhere billions of years ago a silicone ion had to collide with a hydrogen atom just so in order for life to form on earth. An individual sperm had to win a a race against millions of others for any of us to be born. What are the odds? Reality/ nature/ the universe is what we are trying to understand. We have chosen "science" tounderstand it and our metaphysaics simply excludes the existence of reality because the inventors of modern experimental science realized that each individual has his own perception of reality. This has left us rootless and out of touch but more importantly it leaves us at the mercy of mathematics. It leaves us at the mercy of the models we build from experimental results. Rather than seeking reality directly we see it through the prism of science which dismantles it into its parts which we also see as models. We don't put this "light" back together because most of us are specialists and because most of us need to have it in pieces under the microscope to study it. This is a metaphysical failing but like all such failings it can be largely eliminated simply by recognizing its existence and taking a few common sense steps to mitigate it. Experimental science fails when it gets outside of its metaphysics but this is a separate, and potentially more serious, issue. You're going toneed to explain this to me. I'm sure if you're right then I'm wrong.

I had said, The problem is this truth blinds us to the nature of the model and, more importantly, to the extent of our ignorance. I think this might provide a clue to the nature of the disagreement in this thread. People are seeing reality as the sum total of their knowledge and the models they use. As such the existence of infinity is patently obvious to them. What isn't obvious is that reality far transcends our knowledge and our ability to model it. What isn't obvious is that our models are woefully incomplete to understand the totality of reality. If all we see are our models then reality is an open book to us. We can find an equation for everything and every equation has/ is its own reality. Of course no infinity has been measured but this seems a minor point if you know some equations demand its existence. One half is point five. There's half a four in two. The first of two apples is half the apples. "Half" is real and the way anyone chooses to say it is irrelevant. It is a matter of taste, formatting, or semantics. A thousand meters is a klick and one doesn't measure parsecs in nanometers (not in the world I live).

Yes. This is a metaphysical truism. The problem is this truth blinds us to the nature of the model and, more importantly, to the extent of our ignorance. Formatting for reality is as inconsequential as semantics. But the fact remains that constants, measurements, and variables can only be executed to a certain degree of accuracy and equations are not always applied properly. Even in the lab there is still "slop". How this is expressed is a matter of the means and context used to make the point which is largely semantics which I refuse to discuss.

No! Models are our estimation of reality based on logic and the effect of nature on experiment. There is no need for any model to approximate reality itself. I actually said 99.999+%. This is merely reflecting the fact that as a general rule units are chosen in the lab that are accurate to three decimal points. If you choose to measure electron orbits in parsecs then this will break down a little. It's merely an example of a hypothetical model much like reality at the beginning of the big bang or the "event horizon". Nobody expects to measure "infinity" but my understanding is that many people believe it actually exists in reality.

Once you realize that "intelligence" is not only unmeasurable but essentially nonexistent it shouldn't be too difficult to locate their "consciousness". Plants must communicate between their various parts and most, if not all, communicate with others of their species and between species. Find their consciousness and you've found their "intelligence". Where are you looking? I'd guess that to the limited degree they have consciousness they would experience it at the base of the "trunk".

It's so convenient to say infinity is real and then to extrapolate an infinity of worlds. In reality you can no more divide by zero than there is a world with no Lincoln. The reality is that we can only estimate the odds of an event within a few million orders of magnitude based on current knowledge and this means that real numbers like the odds of a specific atom in a specific place a hundred years out are far greater than our concept of infinity, at least to our ability to measure and predict. These are all metaphysical failures but it's not apparent because each sees the world in terms of beliefs and models. Need I even mention that this is no small consideration because it is the difference between an infinite universe or infinite universes and our virtually infintesimal knowledge? Models are OK when properly applied but they are never reality itself. Mathematics works OK when it's properly applied but it can't really be applied exactly in any circumstance. It can be applied within 99.999+% perfectly within our ability to measure and understand all the variables.

I could elaborate or explain post 17. EVERYTHING has antecedents or pre-existence. A baby can't be born without parents and a grain of sand doesn't emerge into reality full blown. Even the most subtle force requires highly complex and mostly unknowable precedents. If you see events and that which exists to be certainty (100% probability) then why can't anything be predicted in advance? Isn't our inability to predict the outcome of sub-atomic collisions always going to result in an inability to predict the future? What are the odds that my bagel has the exact cellular and chemical composition that it actually has? Could the farmer who first cultivated wheat predict where any specific molecule of a fraction of the grain originated? Perspective always affects what is seen. Metaphysics carefully excludes percieved reality like the nature or existence of a grain of sand but you look at it and then say not only that it exists but that the odds of its existence is a certainty. All of reality is preordained from your perspective. It is because it is because it is. Somehow it seems unlikely that if you didn't get the point of post 17 that this one will be any better. Perhaps you'll at least notice I answered the question this time.

I was merely pointing out that the infinity in which you believe extends in an infinite number of directions and their opposite directions as well. There are an infinite number of infinities and, no doubt, an infinite number of types of infinities. All of reality from this perspective is an infintesimal piece of something much larger. It's hardly surprising that such a universe originated from an infintesimal point. Meanwhile reality is so improbable that the odds against it are too large to really understand.

"I couldn't begin to estimate the odds against any event." You flipping a coin 10,240 times and logging the outcome to compare with statistical probability is in no way an "event". Indeed, I predict it will never become an event because for numerous reasons you'll never do it. In the real world coin tosses aren't entirely random anyway since there are factors that can confound the results such as that most coins are more aerodynamic when falling obverse down. This means the way the coin is flipped affects the results. Reality isn't determined by consensus. So who do you know who doesn't "believe" in infinity? Experiment shows lots of big numbers but no infinity. Avogadro can compute chemical reactions even as subtle as dissolving salt in the ocean but the numbers are always finite in the real world. Why use only counting numbers? You can square even the infinite number of numbers between 1 and 1.00000001 or between any two points no matter how close. You don't have to multiply a number by itself. There are no limits to the things you can do with math but there are severe limitations to what you can do in the real world. Despite the impossibility of getting any given pattern in the results of flipping a coin 10/ 10,240/ 10,240 times you will still unique pattern every time. Despite not knowing which butterfly in China caused it there will still be a storm in ten days. The storm is real. The butterfly is real. That numbers exist that extend infinitely with a one to one correspondance to a subset of itselt is not real. People can't seem to see the incredible complexity of reality because they are blinded by the concept that there are an infinite number of points between any two points. As the rules that govern this complexity are discovered many more orders of magnitude of complexity will be overlaid on it. But the number can never become infinite because everything exists and events still unfold.

You know the odds against tossing a coin 10 times and getting all heads are 1: 2 ^10 or one in 1024. We all know we're really going to get something like H/ T/ H/ H/ T/ H/ H/ T/ T/ H. What we don't really think about is that the odds against getting this are exactly 1: 1024 as well. Throw a coin about 10240 times and you'll see the proof of this. Reality isn't always pretty but it's always exceedingly improbable. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and New Orleans goes under water seven days later. A billion years later and two galaxies collide. This is the nature of reality. I couldn't begin to estimate the odds against any event. A ball rolls toward the edge of a table and it's safe to say it will end up on the floor but this is very short sighted thinking. It is short term and large scale. Try predicting something important like which butterfly in China you have to affect to save a city. Try predicting the effect of a reflection on the underside of a water lilly a million years later. Man doesn't know even the tiniest fraction enough to quantify the odds against the outcome of the universe within many trillions of orders of magnitude. Any other belief is mere hubris. How am I supposed toguess the odds against any given outcome? These are great questions though. These are questions we'd all do well to ponder. Such irony. Of course you're right on all counts. However, I aver that the reason science exists at all in any guise is to understand reality; nature itself. We carefully exclude the concept of reality because we are well aware that it is different for each of us. But the question remains whether "infinity" exists or not. It can't be shown by experiment yet it is widely believed anyway. Why do we believe in something that can't be shown to exist scientifically? Of course the answer is simple enough but it can't be shown logically, scientifically, or practically. The problem isn't "science" but rather our understanding of it. It is a metaphysical inconsistency as viewed from most perspectives. There are other perspectives equally logical and equally "scientific".

The problem with most so called skeptics isn't that they believe in evidence but that they believe in all the extrapolations and interpolations of that evidence. Reality exists within experimental results not in our models. Most "skeptics" seem to believe what they're told even when the science behind it is "soup of the day".

I believe the brain is quite simple in its own very complex way. It only seems complex to us because of our perspective. We attribute characteristics of language to the individual because we must understand it through the only medium we have to think; language. People have even gone so far as to say "I think therefore I am" when the reality is we must first exist and learn language in order to think at all. Thought doesn't prove one's existence merely that language exists. Even the lowest life forms know they exist and need no founding principles to avoid predators. I believe there is a natural integration of senses, mind, and body in animals and this is the operating system of the animal brain. This operating system is also the animal language which they use to communicate within and across species (to a more limited extent). Humans must unlearn this in order to acquire our language. The problem here is very very simple; everything we are thinking, all our knowledge, and the very means we use to think are obscured by the perspective generated by language. When we think about sentience, ai, and intelligence we are actually pondering language and its effects rather than consciuousness or cleverness. When we try to program or design a computer to be "intelligent" we are actually programming it to manipulate language. It seems very improbable that sentience or consciousness will simply emerge through such an ability. I'm in general agreement but I still don't like the term "intelligence". I'd prefer to say that most cleverness is specific to both the individual and his experience as well as to the species. An artist elephant might is far less likely to invent new techniques or processes to paint than a human artist yet more likely than a human cosmologist. But almost any beaver is far more likely to come up with a new means of building a wooden dam with no lumber than any human. I seriously doubt modeling the human brain is even possible until we can distill the structure from the operating system we call language. I'm not so sure the human brain is even best suited to machine intelligence. It's quite possible that far simpler brains like insects would be more suitable. If an insect can navigate a car then why can't it serve as the formatting for machine intelligence?

Then a person that is twice as intelligent is twice as conscious? If a person is 1000 times smarter than an insect than it should follow he's 1000 times more conscious or sentient. Are the chimps that beat college students in games of intelligence more aware than the college students. Are elephants which can paint self portraits more intelligent or more sentient than humans who can't? What about children? Are they less aware? How about the individual beaver which invented dam building? If the terms don't fit reality then the terms must be jettisoned. If you're using terms that aren't reflected in the real world then how can you model the real world in order to deal with it or invent "ai". Our terms and language have been in use for many centuries but we now know that they don't very well describe reality. There simply aren't terms to compare the nature of a self portrait painting elephant with a child. This isn't a failure of the child or the elephant but a failure of language and using this language is causing us to see a reality that doesn't exist. It is interfering with our ability to invent machine intelligence*. * I feel justified using the term here because when speed of thought is orders of magnitude faster then cleverness can essentially become a state rather than an event.

I did say what I mean in another way trying to relate it to something everyone can understand. Since intrelligence doesn't really exist as it is commonly understood it is best to simply not use the term. However we can all see that some people are more apt to make connections or faster to do so. Some individuals can achieve results others can't. This is primarily the result of "ideas" and those who think more quickly or more clearly are more prone to having simple or complex ideas. The generation of these ideas is what I am calling "cleverness" and are more related to sentience than to "intelligence". If you twist my arm I'll agree that there really is such a thing as "intelligence" but it's simply not what most people believe it is. You've done a reasonably good job of outlining its nature here. True "intelligence" is more related to speed of thought and speed is rarely impoirtant in results by itself. Without knowledge, experience, and understanding of relevant considerations intelligence has little utility. If one's experience can't be extrapolated to the situation then his intelligence is of no value. Yes, I tend to just talk louder when not understood. It's a hard habit to break and easily acquired.

Not really. I doubt anyone here would feel threatened by a sentient computer with the IQ of an oak tree. As you probably know most researchers have given up on the idea of AS and there is more concentration on "simulated intelligence" (AI). By whatever name anyone chooses I seriously doubt we'll sentience or intelligence until we better understand the nature of both. Perhaps 20 years is a little optimistic.

It's not my contention that the word "infinity" doesn't exist. Merely that it probably has no referent. We wouldn't have the word "zebra" if there was nothing that looked like a striped horse. The only referent for "infinity" is in the construct which is math. The odds against something never becomne infinite or nothing could happen. The odds against everything are simply enormous on a universal scale. You can't divide anything by two more than several times in the real word. If you cut a two by four in half a few times there will be nothing but sawdust for the last piece. Try folding a piece of paper eight times. My comment is very much being taken out of context by being split off and I agree with Mordred that this discussion may be infinitely foolish. I have nothing to gain from pursuing it. I had said that the world is "far more complex than "infinitely complex" anyway. The odds of any given event occuring are effectively less than the reciprocal of infinity. If you ever think they are greater than you're looking at too large a scale or too short a time frame." I meant this to say virtually nothing is really possible yet everything exists anyway and people take the existence of infinity to mean everything is possible and everything (even worlds without a Lincoln) exists. This is about perspective and this discussion is turning it into something more akin to semantics. The reality is that there is no world without Lincoln and there's probably no referent for "infinity" in the real world where we all exist.

You're simply ignoring the point. It doesn't matter to you what intelligence is because you know you have it in abundance. How can you not be intelligent when you can learn so much and tell the teacher anything he wants to hear? You know that any creature that would allow itself to be glued to a car can't be intelligent. I never said nor do I believe such a thing. The only real difference between us is you can't imagine that language is as important as thought. Again you're saying things that aren't real. Even were they real you can't understand any assertion if you aren't even trying. There's simply nothing complex about anything I'm saying. Apparently the only "reasoning" you understand is math. There are no equations that govern how an insect navigates the car to which it is glued. I can handle the gainsaying and lack of understanding but it's much harder to handle posts that disappear. It's quite rude of you to point it out. Your refusal to address my points may be even more tedious. I address ALL of your points and you almost never address ANY of mine. I asked you earlier how we could invent artificial intelligence or machine intelligence if we don't what intelligence even is. "It's not so much that "intelligence" doesn't exist at all as it is that we misapprehend its nature." I do have a "shorthand" way of talking that can be confusing. I'm merely suggesting that "intelligence" as percieved by most people isn't the result of a quick wit or the ability to think deeply or to come up with new ideas. Most people consider "intelligence" to be a state, a condition that applies to some people more than others and, no doubt, more to Strange than almost anyone. But this is a mistaken idea that is derived from thought and an understanding of many centuries of other peoples' thinking. It is not consistent with facts like that chimps can beat college students in some games involving "intelligence". It's not consistent with many established facts. These are the same facts ignored over and over because people tend to interpret the reality right out of the facts. "Intelligence" to the degree it exists at all is an event. I prefer to call it a "manifestation of cleverness" because anyone or anything can be clever but "intelligent" people can in some cases rarely be clever. Cleverness is usually easy to recognize because it's an idea that arises spontraneously and usually from pre-existing knowledge. We are talking about Ai without even understanding the nature of "i". The Turing test is a misdirection because allit does is to program a computer to manipulate words. Of what value are words if people can't understand or speak to such simple concepts as I am. There is nothing complicated about the idea that humans aren't intelligent. It seems to me that any half way "intelligent" person should be able to grasp the idea even if he doesn't agree. At the very least it might open up a dialog about the validity of the current direction of research or the nature of what we do call "intelligence".

As a concept or as a construct "infinity" exists but there is no referent for it in the entire universe. If there were a referent for it then we can imagine a world that is in all ways identical to our world except there was no Abraham Lincoln. Where there was a Lincoln there instead a void. This is obviously an impossibility. No such world can exist. How can people concieve of "infinity" but not notice the impossibly enormous odds against all actual events? What are the odds that somebody would enter exactly this post at exactly this time? What are the odds as determined by all human knowledge in 1890? What are the odds I'd type "hhdejlggfllk" to try tomake a point? There are a million ways to try to make this exact same point in this exact same thread but I typed "hhdejlggfllk". When I started this post I had no idea where it was headed. So what are the odds? I once had an idea for a computer language that led me to compute how many monkeys and typewriters you'd need to get a readable copy of War and Peace in one attempt. It's ~ 4.2 X 10 ^ 805,999. But what are the odds that it would be written exactly as it exists before it was even begun? All things are intimately connected. How would the world be different today if it had a different ending or the author had achieved more brevity? As you go back in time things have more impact on the present. If you physically could kill a butterfly in the Jurassic how would things be different today? A number has no meaning except as it's being used correctly in an equation. What value is a number like ((((((((10 ^ 10) ^10) ^ 10) ^ 10) ^ 10) ^ 10) ^10) ^ 10)unless it can be applied to something? Yet this number (while easily divisible by 2 or 10) is, no doubt, far too small to express the odds against reality itself.