All of kamenin's Comments + Replies

kamenin40

@ E.Y. O.K., no need to damn something or someone -- I think I'm almost there. I still have a blockade at this point: The splitting world describes the world from a all-knowing top-down perspective from where everything looks linear, unitary etc. But from our encapsulated one-world perspective we see this as a series of nonlinear accidents: particles hit at one point, only one point, given by the probabilities governed by the wave function. Entanglement breaks when we measure it. So what I meant was, the splitting produces the illusion for us that the worl... (read more)

kamenin00

To me, science is bound to explain human experiences by explaining qualities of the objects that form the world (I hope it's not too far fetched, I just made it up). Some qualities can be observed, even if it takes an LHC, some can't, at least we don't have any idea yet how. If then the world splitting can't be observed at all and all we know is our single resulting world then I guess science's task is to explain this single world. At least, from inside the single world that may look like the main task of science. I may be wrong, that's my thoughts right n... (read more)

kamenin50

I have two arguments for going for Box B. First, for a scientist it's not unusual that every rational argument (=theory) predicts that only two-boxing makes sense. Still, if the experiment again and again refutes that, it's obviously the theory that's wrong and there's obviously something more to reality than that which fueled the theories. Actually, we even see dilemmas like Newcomb's in the contextuality of quantum measurements. Measurement tops rationality or theory, every time. That's why science is successful and philosophy is not.

Second, there's no q... (read more)

kamenin10

Also, of course, the small guy in the mass is pretty much exchangable. The celebrity in front is not (or to a much smaller degree). Both know that.

kamenin10

Being a celebrity may protect one from consequences, that's true. On the other hand, that celeb people are held in higher regard has partly to do with their taking a 'bigger' risk: Most celebrities could live well without further engaging themselves. They also don't profit as much for themselves - the regular guy's life next to him could change drastically upon any progress reached, while the celebrity himself could still live well without any progress whatsoever (and lose more by the backlash).

Maybe I'm thinking more of Kasparov than Ghandi, but well...

kamenin10

Evolution resolves the infinite regression, not by being super-clever and super-efficient, but by being stupid and inefficient and working anyway. This is the marvel.

Stupid and inefficient is sometimes much better (and faster) than a meticulously designed process. If you've ever dealt with fitting of really complex data, a random walk is often suprinsingly more efficient than any of the refined fitting algorithms. In itself it's just stupid "trial and error" in endless repetition, just like evolution, with a little bit of organizing in the background.

kamenin270

I wonder if anyone ever remarked on the seemingly excellent evidence thus provided for Hinduism over Christianity. Probably not.

Well, David Hume did. In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Although not with a totally straight face.

The best book-long treatise about your points is probably Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. But you probably know that.

7Delta
I started on The Selfish Gene recently and it is a real revelation. It's going to take a lot of getting used to to think of myself as a "mere" machine to ensure the continuation of my genes. Once humans cease to be special, somehow above and apart from the world that built them you have to start rethinking a lot of your assumptions.