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is consciousness more than just the brain creating our experience?


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Absentminded
1 hour ago, Tetusbaum said:

I don’t really care for Descartes generally, but the whole “cogito ergo sum” dealio is pretty hard to crack.
 

Not sure that the idea that your conscious experience is an illusion experienced by another entity is coherent: in that case, you would just be the aforementioned entity dreaming you were someone else, right? So either way, it’s your experience, and you’re the one having it, you just might be mistaken about who you are. But being wrong about who you are isn’t metaphysically challenging any more than being wrong about what time it is is. 

 

Descartes does this whole bit with an all-powerful demon who invades our minds and controls our perceptions and memories, making it impossible to access the world. That said, it seems pretty inviolable that someone thinks they’re sitting in an office and responding to a PPS thread. Even if that person is wrong about all those things, they are at least then being deceived, which presupposes existence.

Those are good points, but I'm not arguing that if we are, say, another being's dream, that we are not conscious. I'm merely saying that in that scenario, it is not our consciousness by which we perceive the world, but that of another. It would not be a "mistaken identity," because, when you dream, you can simulate multiple characters, but generally only view the dream from the perspective of one of them.

1 hour ago, Tetusbaum said:

Who's to say that there is any consciousness at all, and not just the illusion of consciousness? How does something not conscious experience illusion? I don't know, but that's to be expected because things that aren't conscious don't truly know anything, so any flaw in this reasoning is moot.

I'd like to point out that this series of ideas remains unaltered by your statements. This is the part where I was arguing that there may be no consciousness at all.

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58 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

Those are good points, but I'm not arguing that if we are, say, another being's dream, that we are not conscious. I'm merely saying that in that scenario, it is not our consciousness by which we perceive the world, but that of another. It would not be a "mistaken identity," because, when you dream, you can simulate multiple characters, but generally only view the dream from the perspective of one of them.

Well, the consciousness we use is de facto ours, which is my point. So if I thought I was actually just a dream of someone else, what I am saying is that I am just a part of that someone else, not that I don’t exist. Like “Tetus” might not be a real person in the physical world separate from “Absentminded”, but if that is true, then it’s not the case that the person who thinks they are Tetus doesn’t exist, but rather that that person just is Absentminded.

 

58 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

I'd like to point out that this series of ideas remains unaltered by your statements. This is the part where I was arguing that there may be no consciousness at all.

I mean, that is a tough one to reconcile with the experience of consciousness. It’s not clear to me what you could mean when you say there might be no consciousness, since consciousness is what we call the experience of being conscious. It might be that we are all simulated in a computer, or dreamt by a dragon, or fantasizing in the moments before our deaths, or whatever, but regardless, we are experiencing something. And whatever the explanation for that thing ends up being, that is what we mean when we say “consciousness”.

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Absentminded
7 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

I mean, that is a tough one to reconcile with the experience of consciousness. It’s not clear to me what you could mean when you say there might be no consciousness, since consciousness is what we call the experience of being conscious. It might be that we are all simulated in a computer, or dreamt by a dragon, or fantasizing in the moments before our deaths, or whatever, but regardless, we are experiencing something. And whatever the explanation for that thing ends up being, that is what we mean when we say “consciousness”.

I don’t mean that there’s a computer simulating us or something, I mean there’s literally nothing. You can’t think of any way to experience consciousness without being conscious, but if you’re not really conscious, of course you couldn’t think of how that’d work, because you wouldn’t be thinking. You can’t argue against this, because it’s beyond human comprehension.

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2 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

I don’t mean that there’s a computer simulating us or something, I mean there’s literally nothing. You can’t think of any way to experience consciousness without being conscious, but if you’re not really conscious, of course you couldn’t think of how that’d work, because you wouldn’t be thinking. You can’t argue against this, because it’s beyond human comprehension.

But if I wasn’t conscious, I wouldn’t be experiencing consciousness, so this is kind of moot.

 

Words don’t like, have intrinsic meaning. There isn’t something that exists in the world that is called, immutably, “consciousness”, and which we may or may not be experiencing. The word “consciousness” is just an arbitrary symbol that we use to refer to the state of having a subjective experience. 
 

There are certain statements that are irrefutably true due to definitions: generally these things aren’t that interesting and we call them tautologies, but there is some reasoning you can do from nothing (a priori is the term of art). Without getting deep into the weeds here, think of a square. We can state a few things about squares: All squares are rectangles. No circles are squares. These are inherent to the definition of the words involved: round, square, rectangle.

 

Now, if I came along and showed you a picture of a circle, and I said to you “Ah, see, this circle is a square.” Or a picture of a triangle and said “See, this is a square that isn’t a rectangle,” it isn’t the case that I have actually disproved your deductions above. Rather, I’m using the word “square” to mean something other than what you are using the word to mean. Neither of us is necessarily right about what a square “really” is, since the word is just an arbitrary symbol. That said, in this example, I’m not being particularly helpful and am not really engaging in earnest dialogue since I just flatly assert a definition.


The response you would likely give would be something like: “when I say ‘square’, I mean a two dimensional closed polygon with 4 equal sides that join at right angles.” And then the picture of the circle or the triangle doesn’t actually show what I’m describing, so it isn’t relevant to the discussion, even if you insist that those pictures are of squares.

 

So all this to say that since we use consciousness to refer to the state of having subjective experience, you can’t have a subjective experience without it. Either you are having a subjective experience or you aren’t. If you mean something other than that when you say “consciousness,” then we are talking about two separate things, and I don’t understand what the thing you are talking about is, since it is no longer the state of having subjective experience.

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Absentminded
1 hour ago, Tetusbaum said:

But if I wasn’t conscious, I wouldn’t be experiencing consciousness, so this is kind of moot.

 

Words don’t like, have intrinsic meaning. There isn’t something that exists in the world that is called, immutably, “consciousness”, and which we may or may not be experiencing. The word “consciousness” is just an arbitrary symbol that we use to refer to the state of having a subjective experience. 
 

There are certain statements that are irrefutably true due to definitions: generally these things aren’t that interesting and we call them tautologies, but there is some reasoning you can do from nothing (a priori is the term of art). Without getting deep into the weeds here, think of a square. We can state a few things about squares: All squares are rectangles. No circles are squares. These are inherent to the definition of the words involved: round, square, rectangle.

 

Now, if I came along and showed you a picture of a circle, and I said to you “Ah, see, this circle is a square.” Or a picture of a triangle and said “See, this is a square that isn’t a rectangle,” it isn’t the case that I have actually disproved your deductions above. Rather, I’m using the word “square” to mean something other than what you are using the word to mean. Neither of us is necessarily right about what a square “really” is, since the word is just an arbitrary symbol. That said, in this example, I’m not being particularly helpful and am not really engaging in earnest dialogue since I just flatly assert a definition.


The response you would likely give would be something like: “when I say ‘square’, I mean a two dimensional closed polygon with 4 equal sides that join at right angles.” And then the picture of the circle or the triangle doesn’t actually show what I’m describing, so it isn’t relevant to the discussion, even if you insist that those pictures are of squares.

 

So all this to say that since we use consciousness to refer to the state of having subjective experience, you can’t have a subjective experience without it. Either you are having a subjective experience or you aren’t. If you mean something other than that when you say “consciousness,” then we are talking about two separate things, and I don’t understand what the thing you are talking about is, since it is no longer the state of having subjective experience.

I'm afraid I don't really agree with the things you are saying. You say  "either you are having a subjective experience, or you aren't." But I say that if you aren't having a subjective experience, you can't understand what a subjective experience is, and therefore wouldn't know the difference between having and not having a subjective experience. Therefore, something with no subjective experience could believe they are having a subjective experience.

"Believe" isn't a perfectly accurate word there, as belief requires a subjective experience, but I used it because there is no truly accurate word for this concept in the English language. Imagine, though, a belief without thought. It doesn't make sense, but it doesn't have to, because if it's true, than nothing can make true sense to such a being, it can only believe (once again, an imperfect word here) that things make sense.

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23 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

I'm afraid I don't really agree with the things you are saying. You say  "either you are having a subjective experience, or you aren't." But I say that if you aren't having a subjective experience, you can't understand what a subjective experience is, and therefore wouldn't know the difference between having and not having a subjective experience. Therefore, something with no subjective experience could believe they are having a subjective experience.

"Believe" isn't a perfectly accurate word there, as belief requires a subjective experience, but I used it because there is no truly accurate word for this concept in the English language. Imagine, though, a belief without thought. It doesn't make sense, but it doesn't have to, because if it's true, than nothing can make true sense to such a being, it can only believe (once again, an imperfect word here) that things make sense.

The problem I think you’re running into here is an easy one to fall into, but I think you’re vacillating between the horns of a dilemma: either you aren’t consistently using words to mean the same thing, or you’re asserting something that has no bearing on the conversation. The fact that you’re running into difficulty putting this into words is actually a feature of language, not a bug.
 

On the one hand, we have our experience of subjective experience: what it is like to be us. On the other, we have Subjective Experience. You seem to want to put a wedge between these concepts, which is fine, but then you would need to provide an explanation for why you are doing that, and what Subjective Experience is such that it is different from our experience of subjective experience.

 

Even if you did that, though, you’d have another problem, which is that, if Subjective Experience is something different from our experience of subjective experience, it is then not clear why you are talking about it. If we’re interested in the concept of our experience of subjective experience, it would be very strange to then start talking about some unrelated concept.


Because ultimately, whatever you want to call it, there is something that it is like to be me. And whether or not I’m deluded about my own nature isn’t really relevant, since “what it is like to be me” is the concept we’re talking about. It’s easy to get caught up in language and try to express ideas like: “experiencing consciousness without being conscious”, but you can also make the following sentences: “This sentence is false.” “There is a circle that is also a square.” “P and not P are both true.” You can say them and profess to believe them, but they aren’t coherent.

 

There are a number of possibilities about what incoherent statements mean, and we have a lot of examples of things we say regularly that are incoherent, ranging from hyperbolic categorical claims to noises like “Arrrgh.” In this case, it seems most likely to me that the idea you have is something along the lines of our individual consciousnesses actually being a part of something different or larger, and thus understanding them as discrete elements is a bit of a red herring. Which might be true, but that is fundamentally different than saying that there isn’t something it is like to be you or me.

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Absentminded
34 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

The problem I think you’re running into here is an easy one to fall into, but I think you’re vacillating between the horns of a dilemma: either you aren’t consistently using words to mean the same thing, or you’re asserting something that has no bearing on the conversation. The fact that you’re running into difficulty putting this into words is actually a feature of language, not a bug.
 

On the one hand, we have our experience of subjective experience: what it is like to be us. On the other, we have Subjective Experience. You seem to want to put a wedge between these concepts, which is fine, but then you would need to provide an explanation for why you are doing that, and what Subjective Experience is such that it is different from our experience of subjective experience.

 

Even if you did that, though, you’d have another problem, which is that, if Subjective Experience is something different from our experience of subjective experience, it is then not clear why you are talking about it. If we’re interested in the concept of our experience of subjective experience, it would be very strange to then start talking about some unrelated concept.


Because ultimately, whatever you want to call it, there is something that it is like to be me. And whether or not I’m deluded about my own nature isn’t really relevant, since “what it is like to be me” is the concept we’re talking about. It’s easy to get caught up in language and try to express ideas like: “experiencing consciousness without being conscious”, but you can also make the following sentences: “This sentence is false.” “There is a circle that is also a square.” “P and not P are both true.” You can say them and profess to believe them, but they aren’t coherent.

 

There are a number of possibilities about what incoherent statements mean, and we have a lot of examples of things we say regularly that are incoherent, ranging from hyperbolic categorical claims to noises like “Arrrgh.” In this case, it seems most likely to me that the idea you have is something along the lines of our individual consciousnesses actually being a part of something different or larger, and thus understanding them as discrete elements is a bit of a red herring. Which might be true, but that is fundamentally different than saying that there isn’t something it is like to be you or me.

No, I am not saying that our consciousness is part of some larger consciousness. And saying "that there isn't something it is like to be you or me" is exactly what I'm trying to get at. I'm saying that there is no direct evidence that anything experiences anything, and therefore no evidence that there is an experience of "me" or "you" or anything at all. My point is not that there is no consciousness, my point is that, while we can argue over the nature of consciousness, we cannot argue over the existence pf consciousness, because doing so requires consciousness.

Consider the following theoretical dialogue:

I am conscious.

How do you know?

I think about my experiences.

How do you process your experiences? What do you use to think?

My consciousness.

So your evidence for having a consciousness relies on your consciousness.

This would be similar to saying "a is true because a." It's circular logic, and is therefore unstable. It is beyond human comprehension to think of consciousness in a non-circular way, and so it is impossible to provide evidence that there is or isn't consciousness. All I'm saying is that, since it's impossible to provide evidence for either side, we may as well except the possibility that there could be truly nothing. No experience of anything at all. You might've been thrown off because this thread is about how consciousness works, and I am questioning it's very existence, so it's a little off topic, but I hope that now you can see my reasoning (or lack thereof).

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7 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

No, I am not saying that our consciousness is part of some larger consciousness. And saying "that there isn't something it is like to be you or me" is exactly what I'm trying to get at. I'm saying that there is no direct evidence that anything experiences anything, and therefore no evidence that there is an experience of "me" or "you" or anything at all. My point is not that there is no consciousness, my point is that, while we can argue over the nature of consciousness, we cannot argue over the existence pf consciousness, because doing so requires consciousness.

Consider the following theoretical dialogue:

I am conscious.

How do you know?

I think about my experiences.

How do you process your experiences? What do you use to think?

My consciousness.

So your evidence for having a consciousness relies on your consciousness.

This would be similar to saying "a is true because a." It's circular logic, and is therefore unstable. It is beyond human comprehension to think of consciousness in a non-circular way, and so it is impossible to provide evidence that there is or isn't consciousness. All I'm saying is that, since it's impossible to provide evidence for either side, we may as well except the possibility that there could be truly nothing. No experience of anything at all. You might've been thrown off because this thread is about how consciousness works, and I am questioning it's very existence, so it's a little off topic, but I hope that now you can see my reasoning (or lack thereof).

I’m suggesting alternatives for what you are saying because, taken literally, your assertion is incoherent. Not in an “I don’t get it” kind of way, but in a “this is not a logically sound statement” kind of way, much like if you said something like, “This statement is false.”

 

So let’s examine your concern about circular reasoning. The claim you are making is that since we can present no evidence of our subjective experience, there is no reason to believe it exists. Certainly, this is a form of reasoning often used about things in the world: ghosts, rabbits, jackalopes, etc. If someone claims one of these beings exists, it would be very reasonable to inquire what evidence they had for its existence. 
 

But of course, in these cases, I can imagine scenarios in which evidence is or is not presented. There is a possible world where jackalopes do exist and we could look at the fossil record or a live specimen, maybe do some kind of sequencing of its genome, whatever, and I would say something like, “Wow. Weird - I guess I was wrong and Jackalopes have been here the whole time. Dang.”

 

So, what is the similar example for your dialogue? What would constitute the evidence you’re looking for? I suspect that’s unanswerable.

 

Importantly, there are certain claims that do not require evidence, and for which there can indeed be no evidence. Evidence only applies, as illustrated above, to falsifiable claims. Consider the following: “If P is true, then P is true.” Not a terribly interesting assertion, but certainly a true one. However, if you asked me for evidence of the claim, what can I provide? We can keep going: “If P is true, then ‘P is false’ cannot be true.” Again, this is true, but what evidence can we present? 
 

Subjective experience is similarly self-evident. If you think you are having a subjective experience, you’re definitionally correct. It isn’t an interesting assertion: it is a tautology. So when you make the claim that it doesn’t exist, it is nonsensical. Our own experiences can be deceiving or mistaken or deluded, but we can’t be wrong about having them any more than we can be wrong about being in pain. 

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Absentminded
2 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

But of course, in these cases, I can imagine scenarios in which evidence is or is not presented. There is a possible world where jackalopes do exist and we could look at the fossil record or a live specimen, maybe do some kind of sequencing of its genome, whatever, and I would say something like, “Wow. Weird - I guess I was wrong and Jackalopes have been here the whole time. Dang.”

You do not need evidence to be possible to ask for evidence.

 

2 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

So, what is the similar example for your dialogue? What would constitute the evidence you’re looking for? I suspect that’s unanswerable.

Yes, it is unanswerable. That's my whole point. I'm not arguing that there is or isn't a consciousness, I'm stating that you can't argue for or against the existence of consciousness. That's what you need to understand: I'm not saying it's not there, I'm saying we can't debate it.

 

8 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Importantly, there are certain claims that do not require evidence, and for which there can indeed be no evidence. Evidence only applies, as illustrated above, to falsifiable claims. Consider the following: “If P is true, then P is true.” Not a terribly interesting assertion, but certainly a true one. However, if you asked me for evidence of the claim, what can I provide? We can keep going: “If P is true, then ‘P is false’ cannot be true.” Again, this is true, but what evidence can we present? 

The statement "if P is true, then P is true" is not in fact a given truth. For it to be one, we'd have to know what statement P is. If P is "this statement is false," then P is simultaneously true and false, and your statement is false. If you do know statement P, then there will be some inherent flaw in itself by which it can be questioned on it's truth. There is no statement that can be taken as true with absolutely no doubt.

25 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Subjective experience is similarly self-evident. If you think you are having a subjective experience, you’re definitionally correct. It isn’t an interesting assertion: it is a tautology. So when you make the claim that it doesn’t exist, it is nonsensical. Our own experiences can be deceiving or mistaken or deluded, but we can’t be wrong about having them any more than we can be wrong about being in pain. 

I refer to my previous section.

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9 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

The statement "if P is true, then P is true" is not in fact a given truth. For it to be one, we'd have to know what statement P is. If P is "this statement is false," then P is simultaneously true and false, and your statement is false. If you do know statement P, then there will be some inherent flaw in itself by which it can be questioned on its truth. There is no statement that can be taken as true with absolutely no doubt.

I’m afraid you are mistaken. The statement “This statement is false.” is not simultaneously true and false. It does not have a truth value, as it is incoherent, much in the way that the statement, “Arrrrrgh.” is neither true nor false. No statement is both true and false.

 

Thus, when considering the statement: “If ‘This statement is false’ is true, then ‘This statement is false’ is true,” we see that this is vacuously true, as the antecedent (“‘This statement is false’ is true”) is always false, since “this statement is false” is never true.

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Absentminded
5 hours ago, Tetusbaum said:

I’m afraid you are mistaken. The statement “This statement is false.” is not simultaneously true and false. It does not have a truth value, as it is incoherent, much in the way that the statement, “Arrrrrgh.” is neither true nor false. No statement is both true and false.

It is most definitely simultaneously true and false, due to the following paradox: Take it as true so you can attempt to prove it, and by it's own statement it is false. Now that it is false, it is by it's own statement true. Now that it is true, it is by it's own statement false. The same loop occurs when you first take it as false. The sentence is not incoherent, it properly displays exactly the idea I want it to display. A paradoxical concept is still a concept, otherwise, such concepts wouldn't exist to be considered. "Arrrrgh" is also not incoherent if it has a direct meaning that can be understood. It is a sign of frustration, and therefor does in fact have meaning. The phrase "jdmfuelxj," on the other hand, is not coherent, as it has no meaning. But my statement is not comparable to an incoherent statement such as that one, as my statement does have an, albeit paradoxical, meaning that I have just explained.

 

Because your second paragraph was entirely an elaboration on your first, I am not addressing it separately. Please don't take this the wrong way, I see the value of your second paragraph as a continuation of the ideas presented in the first, but because of this structure, arguing against the first paragraph inherently argues against the second, so there's no need to address it separately.

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1 hour ago, Absentminded said:

It is most definitely simultaneously true and false, due to the following paradox: Take it as true so you can attempt to prove it, and by it's own statement it is false. Now that it is false, it is by it's own statement true. Now that it is true, it is by it's own statement false. The same loop occurs when you first take it as false. The sentence is not incoherent, it properly displays exactly the idea I want it to display. A paradoxical concept is still a concept, otherwise, such concepts wouldn't exist to be considered. "Arrrrgh" is also not incoherent if it has a direct meaning that can be understood. It is a sign of frustration, and therefor does in fact have meaning. The phrase "jdmfuelxj," on the other hand, is not coherent, as it has no meaning. But my statement is not comparable to an incoherent statement such as that one, as my statement does have an, albeit paradoxical, meaning that I have just explained.

I can see that this is not going anywhere, and if you earnestly believe that you have no reason to think that you have subjective experience, I’m not sure anything I say would cause you to think otherwise. 
 

I also don’t think you are actually considering what assigning a truth value to a paradoxical statement entails, but you do you.

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Absentminded
8 hours ago, Tetusbaum said:

I can see that this is not going anywhere, and if you earnestly believe that you have no reason to think that you have subjective experience, I’m not sure anything I say would cause you to think otherwise. 
 

I also don’t think you are actually considering what assigning a truth value to a paradoxical statement entails, but you do you.

I suppose I must agree that this isn’t going anywhere. Ultimately, the value of a paradoxical statement (or any statement) is arbitrary, as is the concept of “experience,” so there’s no “right” side to this debate that will be eventually be revealed through discussion. Also, neither of us has proven to be able to outwit the other by giving a point that the other cannot find a response to. Given this, I doubt that we would ever come to an agreement no matter how long we debated. So I agree that it is best to respectfully disagree on this subject.

 

Thank you for this discussion, though. It’s been very fun. 8-)

 

Also, I think we have different concepts of “existence.” That may explain the disagreement. My guess is:

You prefer to take “existence” in a minimal way. If something can be considered, it must exist on some level, though it may not necessarily be real. For instance, a concept isn’t “real,” you can’t grab happiness and take it home with you, but it exists. And this is an entirely valid concept of existence. I, on the other hand, prefer to take “existence” in a relative way. If something has an affect, it exists. I derive this from ideas of quantum superposition, such as the thought experiment “Schrödinger’s Cat,” which details how, when there are two possibilities and you don’t know which is true, both affect you so both are real until you determine one to be true. This is no more and no less a valid concept of existence as yours. So, when I say “experience” may not exist, I mean there may be some higher plane of reality, in which our “experience” is entirely disconnected, and there is absolutely nothing at all, and I rely on the instability of circular logic to allow for that possibility. However, because this experience, while disconnected from my definition of “existence,” would still be there on some lower level (our level), by your definition, it exists.

 

As I said, both ideas are valid, but clearly neither of us is ever going to truly convince the other, so I agree that we should simply let the subject die. But again, thank you for this discussion.

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8 hours ago, Absentminded said:

I derive this from ideas of quantum superposition, such as the thought experiment “Schrödinger’s Cat,” which details how, when there are two possibilities and you don’t know which is true, both affect you so both are real until you determine one to be true.

I would recommend reading about the origin of that thought experiment.

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Absentminded
8 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

I would recommend reading about the origin of that thought experiment.

I looked it up, and don’t see anything that makes my interpretation false. I did see that the original intention of Schrödinger’s Cat was to show that the concept of quantum entanglement is ridiculous, but because quantum entanglement and things existing in multiple ways until measured has been proven, the thought experiment is now useful as an understandable way to describe these ideas, not as an argument against them.

 

If this was not what you were getting at, perhaps you could explain, or send a link?

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This reality is fake, your brain is simulating it, actually you have no brain because you don’t exist

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13 hours ago, Absentminded said:

I looked it up, and don’t see anything that makes my interpretation false. I did see that the original intention of Schrödinger’s Cat was to show that the concept of quantum entanglement is ridiculous, but because quantum entanglement and things existing in multiple ways until measured has been proven, the thought experiment is now useful as an understandable way to describe these ideas, not as an argument against them.

 

If this was not what you were getting at, perhaps you could explain, or send a link?

I’m not a physicist. I have an unused undergrad degree in philosophy and I work in a government adjacent nonprofit as a minor bureaucrat. 

 

Quantum mechanics is largely a field understood via experimental observation, but it happens at a scale where that observation is done via reading instrument outputs, rather than seeing anything happening with our own eyes. This means that we figured out a lot of equations that work to describe quantum systems long before we had a theory of WHY those equations work.

 

This is actually very common in the sciences, but we are a species who lives by narratives, so we try to construct a narrative around the equations, but with quantum mechanics, we don’t have a lot of readily available handholds to start with. There are a number of different theories about why these equations work the way they do, but to my knowledge, none have been proven.
 

The Copenhagen interpretation was dominant in the early days of quantum mechanics, and it basically was “stop wasting time thinking about theory that could be spent doing equations” - it is just the most literal interpretation of what the equations seem to suggest (cats can be in an alive/dead state). The equivalent would be an understanding of integers that claimed that the square root of negative 1 was really an amount of things you could have in the world.

 

By the time quantum mechanics made its way into popular awareness, all the nuance had been stripped away and science journalists repeated the weirdest sounding claims with breathless sincerity, leading to quantum mechanics being understood as a kind of strange magical process that requires the mystical power of human observation to collapse waveforms or entangle particles or whatnot. The reality is that quantum effects happen continuously, as the quantum scale isn’t some other realm with crazy rules, it’s literally just the same world we have always lived in. Quantum effects result in the world as we know and experience it: they’re highly normal.

 

One of the big problems with understanding quantum mechanics is that it is fundamentally about information theory. Here’s a low-stakes example of why this is a problem:

 

Imagine I have a box that you had placed either an apple or a spider inside, butI don’t know which it is. If I were to try and write an equation to explain what would happen if I were to open the box, in order to be as accurate as possible, I would need to treat the box as containing either thing: a superposition of states. This is clearly the right thing to do as me in this situation from a strategy perspective, but it is nonsensical to then make the claim that there really is a spider and an apple in the box at the same time. It’s just a helpful way for me to evaluate the possible outcomes based on the limited information I have: it isn’t the most accurate description of how the world actually exists or functions.

 

This becomes more clear when you consider that I could follow a

multiple worlds interpretation of the apple spider box. If I imagine that there are two parallel worlds, one in which you’ve put a spider in, and the other an apple, then I will have a very useful model to use to think about what to do with the box. I might ask: should I open my mouth, hold the box over it, and open the box? Well, if we’re in apple world, this works out all right. If we’re in spider world, this works out very badly. Since I don’t know what world we’re in, I think it would be a better idea to open the box in a less risky fashion. This understanding of the situation can be extremely helpful and even lead me to the correct decision, but that doesn’t suggest that there really are parallel universes where I dump spiders in my mouth. (They might exist, I guess, but the apple spider box experiment does not provide any evidence to support their existence.)


This is basically quantum mechanics: a very useful set of equations that we don’t have a good narrative explanation for why they work. Not a method to keep cats in a state of alive/dead.

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Absentminded
19 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

I’m not a physicist. I have an unused undergrad degree in philosophy and I work in a government adjacent nonprofit as a minor bureaucrat. 

 

Quantum mechanics is largely a field understood via experimental observation, but it happens at a scale where that observation is done via reading instrument outputs, rather than seeing anything happening with our own eyes. This means that we figured out a lot of equations that work to describe quantum systems long before we had a theory of WHY those equations work.

 

This is actually very common in the sciences, but we are a species who lives by narratives, so we try to construct a narrative around the equations, but with quantum mechanics, we don’t have a lot of readily available handholds to start with. There are a number of different theories about why these equations work the way they do, but to my knowledge, none have been proven.
 

The Copenhagen interpretation was dominant in the early days of quantum mechanics, and it basically was “stop wasting time thinking about theory that could be spent doing equations” - it is just the most literal interpretation of what the equations seem to suggest (cats can be in an alive/dead state). The equivalent would be an understanding of integers that claimed that the square root of negative 1 was really an amount of things you could have in the world.

 

By the time quantum mechanics made its way into popular awareness, all the nuance had been stripped away and science journalists repeated the weirdest sounding claims with breathless sincerity, leading to quantum mechanics being understood as a kind of strange magical process that requires the mystical power of human observation to collapse waveforms or entangle particles or whatnot. The reality is that quantum effects happen continuously, as the quantum scale isn’t some other realm with crazy rules, it’s literally just the same world we have always lived in. Quantum effects result in the world as we know and experience it: they’re highly normal.

Uhm, thanks for the physics lesson, but that’s not what I meant when I said I wan’t sure what you were referencing. I know these things already. Of course there’s no magic to human observation, it has much more to do with photon reception by electrons and with quantum jitter (the tiny motion of particles in an incredibly small space) than it has to do with anything related to human eyeballs. My point is that that unknown things can enter a superposition of both true and false based on uncertainty. Perhaps quantum mechanics wasn’t the best way to try to explain it, so I’ll try explaining via relativity instead, as both can be used to illustrate and support my ideas. Consider Einstein’s theory of relativity, specifically, how it relates to time. The phenomenon of time dilation is is caused by the fact that, since information travels at the speed of light, so does time. (There’s a lot more to it than just that, of course, but I’m assuming you already know that stuff, and really, this is the main part that’s relevant to my ideas.) Put simply, information is effect. Until massless particles carrying information from an event reach you, the event has no effect and therefore has yet to happen from your frame of reference. Because information is effect, and effect determines what has and hasn’t happened from your frame of reference, an argument can be made that your perception determines your reality. Imagine two particles, one here on Earth, and the other so far into space that expansion causes it to accelerate away from Earth faster than light. These particles can never interact, so put simply, from either’s frame of reference, the other doesn’t exist. This can be taken the other way. If something doesn’t affect you in any way, it’s not real to you. If two indeterminate possibilities both affect you, than both are simultaneously true, and if the two possibilities are mutually exclusive, than they are both simultaneously true and untrue.

Does that explain the concept a bit better?

40 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Imagine I have a box that you had placed either an apple or a spider inside, butI don’t know which it is. If I were to try and write an equation to explain what would happen if I were to open the box, in order to be as accurate as possible, I would need to treat the box as containing either thing: a superposition of states. This is clearly the right thing to do as me in this situation from a strategy perspective, but it is nonsensical to then make the claim that there really is a spider and an apple in the box at the same time. It’s just a helpful way for me to evaluate the possible outcomes based on the limited information I have: it isn’t the most accurate description of how the world actually exists or functions.

Until the box is opened, assuming the box is 100% particle reflective, there is absolutely no physical evidence that there is not, in fact, both a spider and an apple in the box, because the interior of the box would be completely cut off from the rest of the universe. If the box is not 100% particle reflective, than there would be an affect from the presence or lack of a spider or apple that could be used, in theory, to determine the presence of either without opening the box, in which case this thought experiment is irrelevant to the topic.

 

43 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

This becomes more clear when you consider that I could follow a

multiple worlds interpretation of the apple spider box. If I imagine that there are two parallel worlds, one in which you’ve put a spider in, and the other an apple, then I will have a very useful model to use to think about what to do with the box. I might ask: should I open my mouth, hold the box over it, and open the box? Well, if we’re in apple world, this works out all right. If we’re in spider world, this works out very badly. Since I don’t know what world we’re in, I think it would be a better idea to open the box in a less risky fashion. This understanding of the situation can be extremely helpful and even lead me to the correct decision, but that doesn’t suggest that there really are parallel universes where I dump spiders in my mouth. (They might exist, I guess, but the apple spider box experiment does not provide any evidence to support their existence.)

While I agree we have no evidence that such parallel worlds exist, we cannot label one as “true” and one as “false” until we have proven which one is actually in effect. So long as you don’t know which world you’re in, both can affect your actions but are not the only thing being considered and have there theoretical effects limited by probability. For instance, if you have a 50% chance to gain two dollars for some unknown reason, and a 50% chance to gain nothing, until you know which happens, this scenario is a net gain of one dollar. This is an example of probability times effect. So, until you are certain which world you’re in, both are half true and half false. (If one has a 70% chance of being true, it would be 70% true and 30% false and the other would be 30% true and 70% false, until proven otherwise. It’s not always halves.)

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Absentminded
49 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

This is basically quantum mechanics: a very useful set of equations that we don’t have a good narrative explanation for why they work. Not a method to keep cats in a state of alive/dead.

That’s not entirely true. Large groups of atoms have been put into superpositions of physically being in multiple places at once. While some of it is useful theory, this is actually a practical science, things really can enter true physical superstates of multiple conditions based on probability, which is further evidence that my ideas are applicable to real life.

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8 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

That’s not entirely true. Large groups of atoms have been put into superpositions of physically being in multiple places at once. While some of it is useful theory, this is actually a practical science, things really can enter true physical superstates of multiple conditions based on probability, which is further evidence that my ideas are applicable to real life.

Is that what happened, or did they perform an experiment that confirmed that performing a calculation that treated the atoms as though they were in a state of superposition yielded a correct result?

 

The way you’re leveraging light cones and the other stuff you are talking about is fundamentally mistaking the propagation of information for the existence of the thing that the information is about. This is fine from a mathematical standpoint: if you need to solve a discrete problem in the world, like how to move X from A to B, or where Y is going to be given conditions C, D, and E, then this is 100% the most useful way to understand these things. It is great for engineering.
 

The problem comes when you take these helpful metaphors out of the constraints of their relevant context and use them to make sweeping claims about reality. If you’re trying to figure out the area under a curve, it is helpful to use non real numbers. When thinking about deficits or budgeting, it is helpful to use negative numbers. But it would be wild to say something like: “it is possible that there are -1 apples in this box”. We talk about having negative balances, etc, but we know there aren’t any actual negative things, despite the fact that the math works just fine with them, and indeed, they can help us accomplish real things in the world.

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Absentminded
13 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Is that what happened, or did they perform an experiment that confirmed that performing a calculation that treated the atoms as though they were in a state of superposition yielded a correct result?

 

The way you’re leveraging light cones and the other stuff you are talking about is fundamentally mistaking the propagation of information for the existence of the thing that the information is about. This is fine from a mathematical standpoint: if you need to solve a discrete problem in the world, like how to move X from A to B, or where Y is going to be given conditions C, D, and E, then this is 100% the most useful way to understand these things. It is great for engineering.
 

The problem comes when you take these helpful metaphors out of the constraints of their relevant context and use them to make sweeping claims about reality. If you’re trying to figure out the area under a curve, it is helpful to use non real numbers. When thinking about deficits or budgeting, it is helpful to use negative numbers. But it would be wild to say something like: “it is possible that there are -1 apples in this box”. We talk about having negative balances, etc, but we know there aren’t any actual negative things, despite the fact that the math works just fine with them, and indeed, they can help us accomplish real things in the world.

Actually, atoms truly can physically occupy multiple places at once. So it’s not just a metaphor. And besides, if a mathematical concept perfectly illustrates reality, what, exactly, separates it from actually being  reality besides our own perceptions. You say “we know there aren’t any actual negative things,” but look at physics an you’ll find that literally every positive has a negative counterpart. Even gravity has both a theoretical negative counterpart in the form of exotic matter and a real negative counterpart in the form of dark energy. Ultimately, what you say here simply doesn’t align with the modern interpretation of physics or mathematics.

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15 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

Actually, atoms truly can physically occupy multiple places at once. So it’s not just a metaphor.

Yes, you do keep saying this. But that does not make it true.

 

15 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

And besides, if a mathematical concept perfectly illustrates reality, what, exactly, separates it from actually being  reality besides our own perceptions.

Well, we can conduct a simple experiment when you calculate the motions required to eat a sandwich and then check to see if the sandwich has been eaten without you separately taking an action in the world. A model of reality isn’t reality.

 

15 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

You say “we know there aren’t any actual negative things,” but look at physics an you’ll find that literally every positive has a negative counterpart. Even gravity has both a theoretical negative counterpart in the form of exotic matter and a real negative counterpart in the form of dark energy.

This isn’t what these concepts mean, on a number of levels. Saying “Dark energy is negative gravity” is a wild interpretation of the theory. They call it dark energy precisely because it is something we don’t know anything about whose existence is inferred rather than observed. “Exotic matter” is another catchall term for “things that violate physical laws as we know them”. 
 

And none of these things is a negative apple, which is my actual point.
 

You might do a physics equation and represent two forces moving in opposite directions with a negative and a positive, but that’s a model - a metaphor. Nothing about either opposing force is “negative”.  There are no negative or positive forces, just forces pushing in different directions.

 

15 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

Ultimately, what you say here simply doesn’t align with the modern interpretation of physics or mathematics.

I do not believe you are a reliable judge of this claim. 

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Absentminded
23 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Yes, you do keep saying this. But that does not make it true.

Then look it up. If you don’t trust me, do your own research. If you find anything that supports your belief that atoms cannot occupy more than one physical space, please sent me a link, as I have looked and have yet to find such an article.

23 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Well, we can conduct a simple experiment when you calculate the motions required to eat a sandwich and then check to see if the sandwich has been eaten without you separately taking an action in the world. A model of reality isn’t reality.

No, but if I then preform the motions as I calculate them, the sandwich does in fact get eaten. The mathematical model isn’t reality, but it can translate directly to reality. Same with a mathematical model of superposition. You can use math to figure out what happens when an object enters a superposition, but it’s not actually in a superposition unless you follow the necessary steps to make it so. But, if you do follow the necessary steps, you will find that the math does translate directly into reality. If math didn’t mirror reality perfectly, we wouldn’t use it.

 

23 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

This isn’t what these concepts mean, on a number of levels. Saying “Dark energy is negative gravity” is a wild interpretation of the theory. They call it dark energy precisely because it is something we don’t know anything about whose existence is inferred rather than observed. “Exotic matter” is another catchall term for “things that violate physical laws as we know them”. 

You are correct. Those are vague at best. I was merely attempting to point out that even gravity, though thought to only be positive by some, is in fact opposed by some forces. Note that I called these things a “negative counterpart,” I didn’t actually say they were antigravity. I apologize if I was unclear.

23 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

And none of these things is a negative apple, which is my actual point.

And what would you call something with the exact structure of an apple made of antimatter? I assure you, if you added such an object together with one normal apple, you would indeed have a sum of no apples.

 

23 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

You might do a physics equation and represent two forces moving in opposite directions with a negative and a positive, but that’s a model - a metaphor. Nothing about either opposing force is “negative”.  There are no negative or positive forces, just forces pushing in different directions.

Each is truly “negative” from the frame of reference of the other. Remember that direction is relative, so “different directions” are truly positive or negative depending on your frame of reference. Perspective is everything in physics.

 

23 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

I do not believe you are a reliable judge of this claim. 

Then my suggestion would be to consult either a theoretical physicist, a physics professor, or the internet. A physicist or professor would be better, but the internet is much easier to access. And perhaps you are right, but I have yet to see any concrete evidence or a theoretical example that I cannot counterpoint, so for now, this is my perspective. I will be willing to change it when sufficient evidence is presented.

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Absentminded
3 hours ago, Tetusbaum said:

I’m not a physicist. I have an unused undergrad degree in philosophy and I work in a government adjacent nonprofit as a minor bureaucrat. 

 

Quantum mechanics is largely a field understood via experimental observation, but it happens at a scale where that observation is done via reading instrument outputs, rather than seeing anything happening with our own eyes. This means that we figured out a lot of equations that work to describe quantum systems long before we had a theory of WHY those equations work.

 

This is actually very common in the sciences, but we are a species who lives by narratives, so we try to construct a narrative around the equations, but with quantum mechanics, we don’t have a lot of readily available handholds to start with. There are a number of different theories about why these equations work the way they do, but to my knowledge, none have been proven.
 

The Copenhagen interpretation was dominant in the early days of quantum mechanics, and it basically was “stop wasting time thinking about theory that could be spent doing equations” - it is just the most literal interpretation of what the equations seem to suggest (cats can be in an alive/dead state). The equivalent would be an understanding of integers that claimed that the square root of negative 1 was really an amount of things you could have in the world.

 

By the time quantum mechanics made its way into popular awareness, all the nuance had been stripped away and science journalists repeated the weirdest sounding claims with breathless sincerity, leading to quantum mechanics being understood as a kind of strange magical process that requires the mystical power of human observation to collapse waveforms or entangle particles or whatnot. The reality is that quantum effects happen continuously, as the quantum scale isn’t some other realm with crazy rules, it’s literally just the same world we have always lived in. Quantum effects result in the world as we know and experience it: they’re highly normal.

 

2 hours ago, Absentminded said:

Uhm, thanks for the physics lesson, but that’s not what I meant when I said I wan’t sure what you were referencing. I know these things already. Of course there’s no magic to human observation, it has much more to do with photon reception by electrons and with quantum jitter (the tiny motion of particles in an incredibly small space) than it has to do with anything related to human eyeballs. My point is that that unknown things can enter a superposition of both true and false based on uncertainty. Perhaps quantum mechanics wasn’t the best way to try to explain it, so I’ll try explaining via relativity instead, as both can be used to illustrate and support my ideas. Consider Einstein’s theory of relativity, specifically, how it relates to time. The phenomenon of time dilation is is caused by the fact that, since information travels at the speed of light, so does time. (There’s a lot more to it than just that, of course, but I’m assuming you already know that stuff, and really, this is the main part that’s relevant to my ideas.) Put simply, information is effect. Until massless particles carrying information from an event reach you, the event has no effect and therefore has yet to happen from your frame of reference. Because information is effect, and effect determines what has and hasn’t happened from your frame of reference, an argument can be made that your perception determines your reality. Imagine two particles, one here on Earth, and the other so far into space that expansion causes it to accelerate away from Earth faster than light. These particles can never interact, so put simply, from either’s frame of reference, the other doesn’t exist. This can be taken the other way. If something doesn’t affect you in any way, it’s not real to you. If two indeterminate possibilities both affect you, than both are simultaneously true, and if the two possibilities are mutually exclusive, than they are both simultaneously true and untrue.

Does that explain the concept a bit better?

 

2 hours ago, Absentminded said:

Imagine I have a box that you had placed either an apple or a spider inside, butI don’t know which it is. If I were to try and write an equation to explain what would happen if I were to open the box, in order to be as accurate as possible, I would need to treat the box as containing either thing: a superposition of states. This is clearly the right thing to do as me in this situation from a strategy perspective, but it is nonsensical to then make the claim that there really is a spider and an apple in the box at the same time. It’s just a helpful way for me to evaluate the possible outcomes based on the limited information I have: it isn’t the most accurate description of how the world actually exists or functions.

 

2 hours ago, Absentminded said:

Until the box is opened, assuming the box is 100% particle reflective, there is absolutely no physical evidence that there is not, in fact, both a spider and an apple in the box, because the interior of the box would be completely cut off from the rest of the universe. If the box is not 100% particle reflective, than there would be an affect from the presence or lack of a spider or apple that could be used, in theory, to determine the presence of either without opening the box, in which case this thought experiment is irrelevant to the topic.

 

2 hours ago, Absentminded said:

This becomes more clear when you consider that I could follow a

multiple worlds interpretation of the apple spider box. If I imagine that there are two parallel worlds, one in which you’ve put a spider in, and the other an apple, then I will have a very useful model to use to think about what to do with the box. I might ask: should I open my mouth, hold the box over it, and open the box? Well, if we’re in apple world, this works out all right. If we’re in spider world, this works out very badly. Since I don’t know what world we’re in, I think it would be a better idea to open the box in a less risky fashion. This understanding of the situation can be extremely helpful and even lead me to the correct decision, but that doesn’t suggest that there really are parallel universes where I dump spiders in my mouth. (They might exist, I guess, but the apple spider box experiment does not provide any evidence to support their existence.)

 

2 hours ago, Absentminded said:

While I agree we have no evidence that such parallel worlds exist, we cannot label one as “true” and one as “false” until we have proven which one is actually in effect. So long as you don’t know which world you’re in, both can affect your actions but are not the only thing being considered and have there theoretical effects limited by probability. For instance, if you have a 50% chance to gain two dollars for some unknown reason, and a 50% chance to gain nothing, until you know which happens, this scenario is a net gain of one dollar. This is an example of probability times effect. So, until you are certain which world you’re in, both are half true and half false. (If one has a 70% chance of being true, it would be 70% true and 30% false and the other would be 30% true and 70% false, until proven otherwise. It’s not always halves.)

@Tetusbaum

I don’t think you saw this stuff, so I’m moving it up. I also posted something directly above this, so you may wanna read that too.

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7 minutes ago, Absentminded said:

Then look it up. If you don’t trust me, do your own research. If you find anything that supports your belief that atoms cannot occupy more than one physical space, please sent me a link, as I have looked and have yet to find such an article.

No, but if I then preform the motions as I calculate them, the sandwich does in fact get eaten. The mathematical model isn’t reality, but it can translate directly to reality. Same with a mathematical model of superposition. You can use math to figure out what happens when an object enters a superposition, but it’s not actually in a superposition unless you follow the necessary steps to make it so. But, if you do follow the necessary steps, you will find that the math does translate directly into reality. If math didn’t mirror reality perfectly, we wouldn’t use it.

 

You are correct. Those are vague at best. I was merely attempting to point out that even gravity, though thought to only be positive by some, is in fact opposed by some forces. Note that I called these things a “negative counterpart,” I didn’t actually say they were antigravity. I apologize if I was unclear.

And what would you call something with the exact structure of an apple made of antimatter? I assure you, if you added such an object together with one normal apple, you would indeed have a sum of no apples.

 

Each is truly “negative” from the frame of reference of the other. Remember that direction is relative, so “different directions” are truly positive or negative depending on your frame of reference. Perspective is everything in physics.

 

Then my suggestion would be to consult either a theoretical physicist, a physics professor, or the internet. A physicist or professor would be better, but the internet is much easier to access. And perhaps you are right, but I have yet to see any concrete evidence or a theoretical example that I cannot counterpoint, so for now, this is my perspective. I will be willing to change it when sufficient evidence is presented.

I’m getting tired of this conversation, so this will be my last post, but I do appreciate the power move of implicitly placing yourself on a level with experts in the field. Always a good rhetorical strategy to hold other people to a higher standard of evidence than yourself. 
 

I assure you that I read and understood your references to game and information theory.
 

Game theory is really helpful for making decisions in some cases, but importantly can’t distinguish between a presumable quantum superposition of apple and spider and a case where you know what is in the box and I don’t (barring adding additional information to the scenario). That is a kind of bad problem if you think that in one case, superposition is really happening. The point is that the model of superposition is equally useful in the case where you already know the answer and I don’t. This means the usefulness of the model is inherently disconnected from how accurately the narrative describes reality. Otherwise, the model would not work as well in one of the two cases.

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Absentminded
40 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

I’m getting tired of this conversation, so this will be my last post, but I do appreciate the power move of implicitly placing yourself on a level with experts in the field. Always a good rhetorical strategy to hold other people to a higher standard of evidence than yourself. 

You presume two incorrect things here. First, you presume that I am intending to place myself on level with experts. When I said “if you don’t trust me…” I was intending to imply “if you don’t trust me to research this to the best of my ability,” not “if you don’t trust me to understand these things as well as an expert.” Also note that I conceded the possibility that you may be right, directly implying that I admit to not knowing a professional level of information on the field. And I suggested the internet as a resource because, to improfessionals like us, it’s the best resource we can easily access. Honestly, I don’t know where you came to the conclusion that this is what I was trying to do.

Secondly, you presume that I haven’t looked these things up myself. When I suggested looking things up, your phrase “…to hold other people to a higher standard of evidence than yourself” implies that you do not believe I’ve looked this up. The only real difference in asking for standards of evidence is that I have asked for links to your research. I did not do this to “hold you to a higher standard of evidence” but rather out of genuine curiosity. If you had asked the same, I would have gladly provided you with links to articles.

So, I don’t know where these accusations are coming from, but I apologize if I’ve made you upset and if you weren’t enjoying this debate as much as I have been.

40 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

I assure you that I read and understood your references to game and information theory.

Okay. I wasn’t sure if I explained it well, and you didn’t respond, so…

40 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Game theory is really helpful for making decisions in some cases, but importantly can’t distinguish between a presumable quantum superposition of apple and spider and a case where you know what is in the box and I don’t (barring adding additional information to the scenario). That is a kind of bad problem if you think that in one case, superposition is really happening. The point is that the model of superposition is equally useful in the case where you already know the answer and I don’t. This means the usefulness of the model is inherently disconnected from how accurately the narrative describes reality. Otherwise, the model would not work as well in one of the two cases.

This would be a very accurate statement, except, while in real life there would be ways to get the information from me knowing (ranging from realistic methods like torture to unrealistic but theoretically possible methods like mapping the patterns of my brain and locating the information and decoding it). In this theoretical example, we’re presuming that you have absolutely no way of knowing other than opening the box, so the theoretical me cannot communicate, act upon, or utilize this information in any way. It cannot be stored as chemical patterns in any way in my body. Put simply, for this thought experiment to truly work, I would either have to leave the universe entirely, or would have to also not know the contents of the box. Otherwise, it would theoretically be once again possible to discover the contents of the box without actually opening it, and the superposition would be a moot point. As such, your phrase “…the model would not work as well in one of the two cases” is actually entirely fulfilled, and as such works better as evidence for my claims that against it.

 

Since you’re done… uh, thanks for the debate. It was a lot of fun. Lemme know if you ever feel up to restarting this conversation, but if not, that’s fine too.

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@Tetusbaum

Hey, I know we've been over with this debate for a while now, but I've thought of a new point. You totally don't have to read it, but I'm gonna post it just on the off chance you do, or in case someone else does.

 

Okay, so... imagine a human brain that's frozen in time. It is in the middle of thinking a thought, it has decades of memories stored in it, but it is not actually thinking and those memories never actually occurred. This brain just is, and always has been, frozen in this thought. Nothing ever happens.

 

Interaction defines existence. There cannot be a "self" without there also being a "not-self" to interact with. This is why, after heat death, the universe is considered "dead" even though the matter and energy is still there. No interaction means no time, no space, no change, no cause, no effect, no existence. A singular particle where nothing ever happens or changes is indistinguishable from nothingness until there is something to observe it, which requires interaction. So, a statement can be made that until this frozen brain begins to once again traverse time, it does not exist, as it can neither interact with or be interacted with by it's surroundings, and the molecules and energy within it cannot interact with each other.

 

However, say there is a timestream, say time is real, and this brain just isn't in it. Suppose we drop this brain into time, let it start working, and ask it "how long have you existed?" It will say "decades" because of the memories it has, despite it only actually having gained a subjective experience moments prior. In this way, it is possible for something with no experience (relative to a higher form of reality) to conceive that it does have experience.

 

Suppose that "higher form of reality" is totally empty. Well, then you've got the illusion of subjective experience without anything actually experiencing. Nothing is happening on any plane of reality, but this object can still conceive that something is happening.

 

Once again, I'd like to reiterate that this only argued against the relative existence of subjective experience, not absolute existence, which I believe you are arguing for. Still, I hope this illustrated my point well. If you've read this, thank you for your time, and I'm sorry for bringing up such an old topic.

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4 hours ago, Absentminded said:

@Tetusbaum

Hey, I know we've been over with this debate for a while now, but I've thought of a new point. You totally don't have to read it, but I'm gonna post it just on the off chance you do, or in case someone else does.

 

Okay, so... imagine a human brain that's frozen in time. It is in the middle of thinking a thought, it has decades of memories stored in it, but it is not actually thinking and those memories never actually occurred. This brain just is, and always has been, frozen in this thought. Nothing ever happens.

 

Interaction defines existence. There cannot be a "self" without there also being a "not-self" to interact with. This is why, after heat death, the universe is considered "dead" even though the matter and energy is still there. No interaction means no time, no space, no change, no cause, no effect, no existence. A singular particle where nothing ever happens or changes is indistinguishable from nothingness until there is something to observe it, which requires interaction. So, a statement can be made that until this frozen brain begins to once again traverse time, it does not exist, as it can neither interact with or be interacted with by it's surroundings, and the molecules and energy within it cannot interact with each other.

 

However, say there is a timestream, say time is real, and this brain just isn't in it. Suppose we drop this brain into time, let it start working, and ask it "how long have you existed?" It will say "decades" because of the memories it has, despite it only actually having gained a subjective experience moments prior. In this way, it is possible for something with no experience (relative to a higher form of reality) to conceive that it does have experience.

 

Suppose that "higher form of reality" is totally empty. Well, then you've got the illusion of subjective experience without anything actually experiencing. Nothing is happening on any plane of reality, but this object can still conceive that something is happening.

 

Once again, I'd like to reiterate that this only argued against the relative existence of subjective experience, not absolute existence, which I believe you are arguing for. Still, I hope this illustrated my point well. If you've read this, thank you for your time, and I'm sorry for bringing up such an old topic.

This is a complicated way to present a situation in which a mind thinks something that isn’t true.

 

But being wrong about things doesn’t contradict having subjective experience. I’m wrong about things all the time. And, for instance, if we have a normal person false memories through some kind of scientific or magical process, we wouldn’t say that this establishes that that person doesn’t possess subjective experience, just like if you knock someone out with anesthesia and they think that something that happened an hour ago actually happened ten seconds ago it would not mean they were demonstrated to not possess subjective experiences.

 

At the end of the day, if the brain thinks anything, no matter how wrong the thought is, it is thinking. And that act of thinking, wether it is about something true or something false, is the subjective experience in question. So the fact that the brain is wrong that it has been experiencing subjective experience for the last 10 years is irrelevant to the question: the fact that it can conceive of anything is proof that it has some subjective experience, which obviously it does, just not as much as it thinks it does.

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35 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

This is a complicated way to present a situation in which a mind thinks something that isn’t true.

 

But being wrong about things doesn’t contradict having subjective experience. I’m wrong about things all the time. And, for instance, if we have a normal person false memories through some kind of scientific or magical process, we wouldn’t say that this establishes that that person doesn’t possess subjective experience, just like if you knock someone out with anesthesia and they think that something that happened an hour ago actually happened ten seconds ago it would not mean they were demonstrated to not possess subjective experiences.

 

At the end of the day, if the brain thinks anything, no matter how wrong the thought is, it is thinking. And that act of thinking, wether it is about something true or something false, is the subjective experience in question. So the fact that the brain is wrong that it has been experiencing subjective experience for the last 10 years is irrelevant to the question: the fact that it can conceive of anything is proof that it has some subjective experience, which obviously it does, just not as much as it thinks it does.

I'd like to point out that, until it is dropped into the timestream, the mind not actually thinking anything, true or false.

 

It gains subjective experience when it enters the time stream, and upon gaining that experience, incorrectly assumes it has had a subjective experience for a long time.

 

Why can't an actual human be in the same state? Why can't we not have a subjective experience, instead be suspended in this exact current moment, but would believe we had always had a subjective experience if we were to suddenly gain one? What's to say that the exact thought you're having right now hasn't always been and won't always be what you're thinking, unless you were to gain true subjective experience in some way? (Not saying you don't have true subjective experience, just saying you may not in this scenario.)

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I'm not sure where the frozen-brain or timestream argument gets us, though.

 

Brains aren't like that and time isn't like that, so, if those are to be useful things to have a thought-experiment about, then, you haven't shown how it's useful, all you did was show how a frozen brain can't have subjective experience. That doesn't get us anywhere on the question at hand. It didn't tell us anything about subjective experience which real, interacting brains might have.

 

3 hours ago, Absentminded said:

Why can't an actual human be in the same state? Why can't we not have a subjective experience, instead be suspended in this exact current moment, but would believe we had always had a subjective experience if we were to suddenly gain one?

All I can say is, if an actual human brain was in this state, and didn't have subjective experience but instead only a belief in the case where it did "enter a timestream," if I agreed that there's no reason why this couldn't happen, then we still haven't said anything at all about conscious experience itself and whether it's more than what our brains create.

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