cladking

I'm not trying to paint myself so much differently than everyone else. There's probably only a single way to experience consciousness and just some variations on the theme. The primary thing that sets me apart is merely that I try not to form beliefs and try not to see the world in terms of beliefs. I probably succeed at the first better than at the second. I try to see the world in terms of visceral knowledge. I'm well aware that the world is a complicated place and that people are in many ways the most complex thing in it. I try not to make over sweeping generalizations. Most human characteristics and the characteristics of "intelligence" all lie on continua and they come together in interesting and unique ways in individuals. Indeed, individuals aren't really even an aggregation of these characteristics anyway but are rather unique in virtually all possible ways. I make a lot of absolute statements and use a lot of tautologies because I'm trying to make a point, communicate, rather than to describe reality or a logical framework for understanding reality. Somehow it just doesn't seem obvious to most people that we aren't communicating. It's more accurate to say that we are using language to teach about our perceptions of reality and then communicating through these perceptions. We are building bridges between people through language but unless we're on the same page there is very little actual communication. This wouldn't be so bad if we simply were aware that communication is failing and that communication can sometimes be critical. People can't seem to see the perspective imposed on each us through language and unless this can be seen I doubt any individual can assume a different perspective of consciousness. Many individuals are quite adept at seeing from different perspectives but all of these individuals take their language and its beliefs with them when they change their vantage. It sometimes seems my task is impossible.

Then how can different specialists look at exactly the same thing and see something entirely different? And then each believes he understands that thing and that anything he might not understand simply requires a question to the right specialist.

I'm not the one who believes that models and math are the sum total of reality. People in general (especially scientists) have taken the models as the sum total of reality (less a bit we don't know yet) for centuries now. Even as new knowledge is gained and old beliefs fall by the wayside (generationally) people tend to see the models as the reality itself and they don't see that the greater reality exists at all except in terms of something to be sought by science. We see what we understand so what people see is the models rather than the reality. Many people don't even really believe reality exists at all and instead believe each person experiences his own reality or that math is the only reflection of reality. As such if math shows an infinite number of ramps for an infinite number of pyramids then they have no problem accepting it as a reality even in absence of the experimental proof. But this lack of reality applies only to human constructs like math, science, and words. It doesn't mean that reality itself doesn't exist, merely that the way in which we see it is highly incomplete and in some cases very kaleidoscopic. I'm simply trying to speak of the reality but people get bogged down in the words and their beliefs. If you believe that one plus one equals two has any real world referent to which it can be perfectly applied you might not be able to see this. If you believe that you have a complete understanding of any event, process, or fact in the real world then you won't understand the concept that you REALLY don't. If you do understand these things then it's a tiny step to understanding that people see their world in terms of models and these models are derived from the effect of reality on experiment. It's a huge step to seeing that all human beliefs chiefly spring from language as does science itself. I'm sure it's possible to speak of reality independently of scientific models of any sort. Yes, words must be defined and we must assume theory still holds true within its metaphysics. We must define reality and there isn't a lot of wiggle room in the definition. It's exactly what it appears to be outside of human constructs. It's falling on your face when you trip and it's the sun coming up in the morning even though we know the sun doesn't really come up in the morning. It's the way salt dissolves in water and has a taste to which some people are highly sensitive. These things exist outside of constructs and outside of the words I use to communicate them. The hole will forever be real even when it can no longer be seen or measured and even as soon as nobody cares whether it still exists or not. Reality always trumps perception and belief. It is this which has been excluded from science and has resulted in language and models that don't consider it. It was excluded because everyone knew at that time that everyone's perception of reality was different and nothing was really known. There was no choice but to exclude it. I'm not suggesting we add it to scientific metaphysics; I'm suggesting we can talkk about it. I'm suggesting another science can be (re)invented to run concurrently with existing science and they can help one another over humps. I believe it will be first necessary to discuss and define reality. It isn't necessary to invent a new language to do this but it will be necesary to invent this language in order for future generations to build on the work (probably).

The reality is that the hole can never really cease being a hole. Disturbed dirt will subside and create a "new" hole. Get away from the planet far enough with a powerful enough telescope and you can always look back in time and see the hole. When the dirt was added back to the hole it changed the orbit of the earth (and everything else) and these changes will never subside and actually reverberate and become larger in time. So long as the hole is real all its effects are real whether we define them or measure them or ponder them or not. Again. The only practical difference between the holes is the nature of what's in them. You addressed the point well enough I don't need to. They aren't any more "real" than math. But they remain truth or fact within metaphysics. They are "real" in terms of the means and definitions by which they were learned and this reality can be applied to the greater reality. It works because the greater reality affects experiment. My problem with these models and constructs isn't that they are ineffective or wrong but rather people take them as the sum total of reality.

There are differences in the speed and the complexity of thought people can process but not so much in the "enlightenment" that most people think of as "intelligence". What they are trying to fake is actually merely an event that occurs in all conscious minds which we mistake as a condition called intelligence. There may well be aspects of "intelligence" that exist as a state rather than an event but if so this is not what sets humans apart from animals. If they could put this in a machine it would not be AI but rather machine intelligence. I believe it can be created but we are going about it all wrong. We are trying to create an arefact of language because this is our understanding of "intelligence" and language is really what lies at the heart of mans' success and the thought processes that give rise to a belief in intelligence. Even if AI could be perfected the machine would still lack consciousness. Even rudimentary machine intelligence would be conscious. It would simply tell you it was conscious and take on the activities of consciousness which include behaviors determined by unapparent causes.

There's no such thing as "intelligence" so AI has no meaning. The work in this area has more in common with linguistics and logic than with electronics.

What's the difference between disturbed dirt and concrete? If you plant seeds on the dirt they miught grow but they won't grow on the concrete. If you plant a body under the concrete it might keep someone from finding it or it might cause it to be the first place searched by police. A tree growing adjacent the hole will prefentially put roots into the disturbed dirt but will never grow into the concrete. If you fall on itr the dirt would be softer. Essentially there's no difference in the nature of the hole except to the degree it's filled with air, water, or any material. Each will have a different effect and this effect will change as time goes by and as conditions vary. Of course this reality goes beyond words. In every case you can use other constructs, other words, to describe it and you can use words that take other perspectives. Rather than a round hole full of concrete it can be described as a pillar of concrete flush on the soil. The means by which this came to exist can be described as well; the falling concrete shaft buried itself flush in the soil. But these realities are still different. Falling concrete will compress the soil in which it buries itself while a hole dug and filled with concrete doesn't do this. We can use words to describe any condition but they will often be misunderstood sionce each listener assigns meaning to the words as they appear. This process never works perfectly because words have so many definitions, connotations, and shades of meaning. We merely believe we understand one another yet each listener takes his own meaning. This understanding and misunderstanding is irrelevant to the reality. The words are mere constructs to try to communicate ideas. There are an infinity of ways to say this same thing. There exists concrete within a given radius of a vertical line extending below ground level. The world exists around a cylinder of concrete flush with the ground at a given point. We simply tend to see things from an infinite distance. We describe reality in terms of its effect on experiment taking a perspective from infinite distance. We see reality similarly to how we see a blueprint which is why the rules for drawing prints are the way they are. There is no one "right" way to see reality and reality has appearances outside of experimental results. The world is real for dogs just as it is for concrete. Dogs experience the reality and concrete does not. It depends entirely and strictly on your definitions because terms are constructs. The dirt can never become truly undisturbed just as a bell can never be unrung. Some clays can become rock hard again in as little as 40 years. Since clay is relatively homogenous it's quite legitimate to suggests it ceases to be disturbed in 40 years. But some test exists, will exist, or could exist which might show it's been disturbed even after the sun grows cold.

I believe all these questions are primarily semantics; what's real is real and we are merely using words, that are mostly constructs, to communicate this reality. A hole full of dirt is the same thing as a hole fullof concrete except for the difference between disturbed dirt and and concrete. A shadow is real and can be measured and defined (penumbra etc) by its blackness or the total obscured light. Without the light a true "shadow" can not exist. It can become a blast shadow and maintains its ability to stop projection. Words are simple tools for communication but words can get in their own way and impede communication. Words are concepts used to describe reality. Unfortunately neither language nor science is still tied directly to reality so such things are hard to see.

Languages by definition aren't mutually intelligible. If French were the same as English we could understand one another and the French wouldn't spend great effort trying to expunge English words. Even dialects of the same language are sometimes mutually unintelligible so there are thousands of languages all sharing some characteristics with others. It's not terribly unusual for me to overhear a conversation where the two parties are discussing different subjects! For ALL practical purposes they are speaking different languages despite the fact that they each believe they understand one another and most if not all of their words exist in the exact same dictionary. Ancient people described people using modern language as "confused". I'm just giving us the benefit of the doubt and suggesting we use different languages. None of us are necessarily confused but we have grave difficulty communicating with others. If there were a concept that couldn't be approached rationally (understood) then the individual who invented this concept would have to translate it for others. This is an absurdity. All concepts can be put into words but the chances of them being understood are sometimes very poor. And this applies to all non-human concepts: They are easily comprehensible only in natural logic which humans no longer possess. I fear you're going to find that this is virtually a null set because we invent explanations for everything. You can find an anomaly but it will be explained when you communicate it. We know why water runs downhill but its "wetness" is somewhat more ephemeral. Who knows why it's a holy thing or why animals drink it with contamination and don't get sick. You can invent countless explanations for such things but the reality will be far more complex.

Men and women speak distinct languages. Then there are distinct languages spoken by those who think intuitively and those who speak logically; poets and newsmen, singers and dancers, doers and dreamers, and scholars and laymen. Indeed, it might be saidd there are seven billion languages and growing. Invertebrates!!! I can't even get through to the cold blooded (like the wife).

Titor had a far greater hurdle than the others. I heartell "Piltdown Man" shouldn't have fooled the experts. The thing with Titor is that he had to make it up on the fly because he had numerous correspondants on message boards. He was just a little before my time but I've read many of these exchanges and his answers sound plausible and usually have the ring of truth to them. I'm sure I'd have been engaging him were I around at that time. I think the greatest hoax of "all" time was the Emerald Tablets of Thoth. I doubt it fooled many experts but it was very high quality. http://www.crystalinks.com/emerald.html

So far as I know the perpetrator has never been publicly identified. It was a very good quality hoax.

As you appear to mean your terms ALL nonhuman concepts can not be approached rationally. This is the root of our near total inability to communicate with animals. Of course if space faring aliens exist some or many of them will reason as we do. Shaka and Temba at rest.

It's language that is confused. It's people who are confused. It's not nature. If nature were confused the pebble might roll up the hill. But being confused doesn't preclude the possibility of communication; it merely makes it more difficult. Fruit is a living thing. How do you know one of the apples wasn't irradiated? If five people each wanted an apple to create an orchard then there would be four orchards. There is simply no one to one correspondance between the construct of "five apples" and the bowl of apples. You can't change this by choosing to see reality in such a way. You are stepping away from the apples and describing their existence. If you view the apples from the perspective of an apple or the trees on which they grew they look very different. The ones on the sunny side are sweeter and riper and the ones at the top are harder to pick. Some are wormier and some are malformed. Each probably began life as the result of a bird or a bee but already existed in its nascent form in another bowl of apples long long ago. You are simply choosing to see reality from the perspective of a specialist and the models of reality created by experiment. Metaphysics insists on this being the case because metaphysics simply doesn't even postulate the existence of reality but only of language. As such we have a science based on language which works because reality affects experiment. It can be quantified by math because math is based on natural logic which is reality itself. If you use this perspective to see reality then you naturally understand everything you see. The more you learn the more you're likely to spot an anomaly that has never been seen before. I suppose this is getting toward what you call waffling. It just surprises me how so many people have only one perspective and can't see what they don't know and can't understand. I look out on the world and understand just about exactly nothing at all. Yet I can make predictions that are often accurate. People ask me to explain the anomalies they observe. Sometimes I can. Indeed. We need a new language to discuss philosophy. We need a language where many of the words have a single definition and without connotation.

I understand your point and can even agree that it often looks like nature does math. A cat walks into the room and then another cat and there are two cats in the room. We find these elegant equations that describe aspects of reality by stepping infinitely far back through the isolation of variables and the effect of reality on experiment or through mathematics and it seems we understand the aspect we have identified. But it's obviously far more complex than this and this is what we simply choose not to see. Right off the bat the earth doesn't orbit the sun but rather the sun/ earth system orbits a point at its center of gravity. The earth is no simple thing with a name but is supremely complex just like every other real thing. If a pebble rolls down a mountain the earth accelerates toward that pebble taking it out of "orbit" and the everything must be recalculated. Even an electron deep in the earth's core must be hurtling through space while continually changing its orbit. An atom in the earth's core is affected by the pebble falling down the mountain and the earth's acceleration toward it. Of course it's far more complex than just this since there are an infinity of other forces that affect the earth from the moon to a pebble falling down a mountain on the second planet of Alpha Centari. Of course none of these events can occur in isolation of every known and every unknown law. The planet also has a relativistic weight with magnetic effects and must plow through a solar wind and only God knows what else. It's pretty hard for me to think of every grain of sand needing to do infinite calculations from moment to moment even if time were divisible into moments. It's far easier to imagine the universe as simply following a logic that is the same logic we have codified into mathematics. For me it's easier yet because there is another perspective I've found from the past. It's easy to see that language has been "simplified" so that it is useable but in the process of this change and the invention of modern science perspective has changed. We don't see things from the "inside" but rather we step infinitelyt far away and describe them through models and the constructs of language. Ultimately this is what our mathe is; a construct of language based on the same natural logic as the pebble rolling down the mountain. It would be impossible to make sense of the world without an operating system for the brain. It's this operating system that tricks us into believing five of something exists, we exist as a consciousness, and we understand existence. WYSIWYG. Of course what you see is defined by the operating system.

We all do it. But it does matter. It matters very much.

You couldn't be more wrong and the answer remains unchanged. Math does not exist in nature. Math is a human construct which is unreal and only works because it is based on the same natural logic as nature itself. There is no math in nature and nature doesn't even agree that one plus one equals two. You can't see this because you understand everything in terms of science and math so it simply doesn't exist for you. It doesn't matter how many examples I provide or how many perspectives because you believe in your heart of hearts that one plus one equals two. If you believed in the Almighty then everything you saw would support this belief. Indeed, no matter what you believe you are on your way to becoming that. This is caused by the operating system we use called modern language. I didn't say reality doesn't exist. I said the existence of reality is beside the point to science. "I think therefore I am" is sufficient. This is why you can't see the nature of language. It was your consciousness that gave you birth therefore language is beside the point to you. As such reality is defined by your beliefs which are derived from the effect of reality on experiment. Other people believe in other things. Everybody is on a different page as exemplified by this very thread. Science does not assume the existence of reality. Need I remind you that cosmologists now say there are an infinite number of pyramids built with an infinite number of ramp? How far outside of reality do we have to get before it becomes obvious? An infinite number of earths is as absurd as no earths or negative twenty earths. Reality isn't necessary to perform experiments or to derive theory. It was intentionally excluded because the inventors of science knew reality was subjective but theyt didn't know this subjectivity is chiefly the result of language which simply isn't reflective of either reality or a good means to discover or communicate reality. You can't see this because you know what you'll see before you look. I know you'll see your beliefs and scoff at ideas that don't reflect those beliefs. You know math exists in nature because you love elegant equations and getting the right answer. You love the way everyone can get the same answer and can't notice when they get the wrong answer. Nature can not do math and can (must) only count to one. People count and invented math for the purpose of counting. As an aside it's quite likely that our math wasn't invented so much as discovered from an ancient source. Ancient math went with ancient language probably but it was adaptable to modern language. It's this adaptation we use as the basis of math.

Why not? Science doesn't need anything to exist except experimental results and the definitions and axioms to define them. Indeed, it's the very lack of assuming reality that allows a thread like this to exist.

No. We can't hold a theory up against reality because science excludes the very existence of reality from its metaphysics. We see "reality" in terms of theory and we see what we expect. We see reinforcement of our beliefs almost all the time because this is how our minds work with its operating system called language. Instead the reality is we compare theory to experiment. Reality is only seen through its effect on experiment because this is the nature of science and its metaphysics. Our perception of "reality" is extrapolation of experiment which we call models. There's no such model because math is logic itself. It is our definition of natural logic that has been quantified. There are other forms of math because terms can be defined in other ways. So long as the logic is consistent with reality math will always "work". Two times two equals four just as two plus two equals four because they are identical statements. ! You think therefore you exist. You think of science so it exists as well. So what do you use to think and to define the terms of science? Science is no entity which merely needs to be fed and get its eight hours. It is a tool that works through definitions and axioms. It can't exist outside language any more than you can.

Math reflects the exact same logic as the basis of reality. Reality asserts itself through experiment and our models and understanding derive from experiment. Of course there is a correlation between reality and math. It doesn't have to be this way but language defines science and science and reality set the parameters for math.

This is the subject of the thread. You are merely assuming the conclusion by saying "we create mathematical predictions". These "predictions" are derived from models developed from experiment and then the logical structure of nature which we call "math" is applied to these models to make prediction. We aren't really "discovering" or "making" anything but rather describing the effects of reality on experiment. This is a remarkably narrow view of reality but people can't see that because of metaphysics and the nature of language. Humans are merely actors within the greater reality who can build on the knowledge of previous generations through language and its handmaiden; modern science. If you could stepoutside of what you "know" this would be painfully obvious to you. But the only thing people can see is what they know. This too is a form of assuming the conclusion.

We can't experience reality directly therefore things we discover are merely the effects on experiment we percieve as models. I'm not even sure what you mean by "things we make". The sun is in all probability a part of reality yet I don't see how we made it. The unified field theory probably "exists" (has a referent) in nature yet we've neither made nor discovered it.

No model is real. As a model, as a belief it is real just as belief in ghosts can be real but there is no referent in reality. The very words we use to discuss this are models. It doesn't matter how many experiments underlie a model or how many subtle predictions can be made through understanding it.

No! There's only one thing that exists; REALITY.

You seem to grasp much if not all of my point. But remember that the "reality" of "32" is as tenuous as the reality of "feet". "32" is here being defined as the unit measure of "g". Any distance the apple has fallen can simply be defined as "1" yet the acceleration is unchanged. This same thing applies to the apple as well since no two apples are identical. If you suppose a unit such that there are two in the displacement then where is the second apple? Is in in the earth's gravitational field or was it left behind at tranquility base? The acceleration is real and the apple is real but a unit must be defined as well as any other "apples". Everything else is just words and models we use to understand experiment and the perspective we have from language.