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To be continued...
A link here would be nice.
Also: I'm not finding any references to god in this article, except the explicit statements on how this is *not * about creationism or an evolutionary fairy. What am I missing?
Eliezer's discussion of evolution as an "alien god". That is, if you absolutely have to have a "god" figure, then evolution itself fits the bill pretty perfectly. Unfortunately for the Judeo-Christian types, it's less Jehovah and more Azathoth (H.P. Lovecraft's god of chaos) in nature. See Alien God.
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding /ehj2.
Eliezer's discussion of evolution as an "alien god".
But...That's not... Yeah. If absolutely have to have a "god" figure, then you might as well grossly misinterpret EY's explanation to make it fit your own beliefs.
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding /ehj2.
Thank you! I'm slowly beginning to learn this rationality thing it would seem :-)
some focus on the 'Ending', some focus on the 'Journey', some sees no value at all... Therefore, I'm looking for a way to objectively measure the value of a person's life. (not sure if that is even possible)
Try watching Daniel Kahneman's TED talk The riddle of experience vs memory, it's nice and seems relevant to your question.
Sam Harris also has a really good TED talk on "the Sience of Morality"
In response to
LA-602 vs. RHIC Review
If it is true that we live in a universe in which every possible future exists, then world destroying events don't matter at all.
Yes they do!
I don't want to live in one of the worlds that are going to die, so I'm going to do my best to make this world not be one of those (though I know that's not quite how it works ).
Knowing that the world is deterministic does not change anything from our perspective, or relieve us of moral responsibility. It all ads up to normality!
In response to
Passing the Recursive Buck
Ian, there's nothing wrong with reductionism.
Overly simplistic reductionism is wrong, e.g., if you divide a computer into individual bits, each of which can be in one of two states, then you can't explain the operation of the computer in just the states of its bits. However, that reduction omitted an important part, the interconnections of the bits--how each affects the others. When you reduce a computer to individual bits and their immediate relationships with other bits, you can indeed explain the whole computer's operation, completely. (It just becomes unwieldy to do so.)
"I mean if you list all the actions that it's parts can do alone, the combined thing can have actions that aren't in that list."
What are these "actions that aren't in that list"? They are still aggregations of interactions that take place at a lower level, but we assign meaning to them. The extra "actions" are in our interpretations of the whole, not in the parts or the whole itself.
A car without its engine isn't very good for driving, and neather is the engine all by itself. But that doesn't mean anything magical happens when you put them together. But that doesn't mean you can put them together any which way.
In response to
The Ultimate Source
Also, knowing that the book I'm reading is of a deterministic nature, doesn't make me any less interested in knowing how it ends.
In response to
The Ultimate Source
Imagine a ball rolling down a pipe. Att one point the pipe forks, and at that point there is a simple mecanical device that sorts the balls according to size: all balls larger than 4 cm in diameter go left, all smaller ones go right. Let this be the definition of a "choice" (with the device as the agent) for the following argument, and let "you" define a certain arangement of atoms in Eliezers block-universe-with-glue. Then "you" will be what "decides" every time you make a choice; trivially so, given those definitions.
My question is, what other definitions could we use to reach a different conclution?
I mean, if you define "free" in "free will" as "not goverend by physics", or "you" as different from the (or some part of the) structure of your atoms, we are having a different debate here.
Or a mathematician.
No worries! I think it kind of illustrates what bias is quite nicely though. I haven't been so "exposed" to it personally but I guess that's because I'm not from a English speaking country, I'll try to think of quote that would actually add something to the list next time. Thanks for stating your reason for downvoting!
Cheers!
I've never heard it...
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"There are possible minds in mind design space who have anti-Occamian and anti-Laplacian priors; they believe that simpler theories are less likely to be correct, and that the more often something happens, the less likely it is to happen again."
You've been making this point a lot lately. But I don't see any reason for "mind design space" to have that kind of symmetry. Why do you believe this? Could you elaborate on it at some point?
That something is included in "mind design space" does not imply that it actually exists. Think of it instead as everything that we might label "mind" if it did exist.