unreality

Sorry, learned em a year or two ago. It was just the first thing that came to my head. The difference is that the discrete behavior of economics means that, with enough data and computing power, we could entirely encapsulate economics. You might then say that you could extend that to physics to, with "enough data and computing power", but because of Heisenberg & whatnot and the continuum vs discrete (we don't know yet but either way), that that's not possible for physics. So there's the fundamental difference I understand you and agree. Although if we broaden both our estimation for "large things" and "small things" enough our simplifications might find some crossover room and we could come up with a unifying theory. That doesn't mean it's right, it's still just an infinitesimal approximation to reality, but unified in one instead of separate globes. I see no reason why we can't get slightly more complex to encompass the aspect of reality we know about (our "really small" (quantum) and "really big" (galaxies) might be NOTHING compared to the true scale/scope of the universe but nevertheless we'd think we'd unified it).

Today on my first day of break I found myself bored already and messing around with exponential equations. A lot of very simple equations, such as a^b = b^a, are not solvable by typical algebra, although sometimes variants are. For example, it's possible if b is a known multiple of a... ie, x^(kx) = (kx)^x, solving for x in terms of k, you get x = k^(1/(k-1)). But most equations with exponentials, including things as simple as e^x = x (which has no real solution and only one complex solution, x = 0.31813150520476413531 - 1.3372357014306894*i) are just impossible with standard algebra unless you're clever or have a computer. The point here is to not google/wolframalpha/maple/matlab these but instead try to figure them out yourselves, without using the kinds of non-elementary functions people have devised (ie, LambertW). For an example of what I mean, see the hint I posted for #1. Roughly in order of difficulty... [1] e^y = x*y Find y in terms of x, ie, find the function y(x) [2] For a function f(x) = x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(... which goes on to infinity, find the derivative f ' (x) And also find the values of x such that f(x) is finite. [3] Now introducing the "W" function, which solves this equation: z = W*e^W. So W(0) is the solution for W of 0 = W*e^W, i.e. the value is W(0) = 0. Other values are W(-pi/2) = i*pi/2, and W(-1/e) = -1, and W(1) is the omega constant (.56714). Armed with this "non elementary" function, solve this analog of the quadratic equation for x: a*ln(ln(x)) + b*ln(x) + c*x = 0 (hint: try it with blnx + cx = 0 first) [4] Use W to invert these functions: f(x) = x^x f(x) = x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(... f(x) = x*ln(x)

This is more or less my viewpoint. We only approximate 'true physics' with our equations, which could be much simplified versions of the real thing, however accurate enough to a certain degree to be useful for us. An example would be using 1 + x + x^2 / 2 + x^3 / 6 to approximate e^x. It ignores an infinity of terms of the Taylor series but still is a very close approximation as long as x is inside a certain range. We've seen other examples of this in physics throughout the centuries. Newton's simple laws of motion & gravity, for example, work for the kinds of numbers of speeds, distances, and times that we see in our everyday human lives on Earth, although are just approximations to the more complex "relativistic" equations. It could be that we are forever simplifying true reality.

UtF: read my disclaimer in there how I didn't know if donkeys did such things or not I was anticipating you! gvg: I think you nailed it when you said " And plus, what you think may be the end might not be; you simply gave up too early". I'm a big proponent of the idea that we cannot know ANYTHING for sure. There are no absolutes. And part of that is of course, not knowing if you're right. Not knowing for sure for sure that is, although you can still be reasonably confident to base decisions off that 'square' of your 'probability matrix'. But like you said later on in the paragraph, there is never an excuse to stop learning. We can always learn more about the world. And once you [this is a generalized 'you' by the way. not you specifically] realize that, that you can always learn more about the world, how could you ever possibly say that your set of philosophical ideas is the truth? You can't.

Agreed, but what I've seen others (such as ADParker) say is that, while the person you are specifically "arguing" with may not be swayed (in fact out of an ingrained defensiveness, might become more polarized) but people on the "fringe"/fence who are watching the debate or only taking a small place in it may be moved by words or made to think about things they hadn't considered. I think I'm jaded for my age but every so often someone presents a philosophical idea, not necessarily directly to me, that I hadn't considered and it rocks my world and I think about it for a while and sometime change my views. I absolutely absolutely disagree. I cannot stand the human hubris. How do you know what a donkey is thinking? If an advanced alien species were looking at humans from the outside, would they be able to tell that inside our minds we were pondering the meaning of life? I'm not suggesting that a donkey does or does not (I simply don't know and don't know much about the intelligence of donkeys in the first place haha, and accept I cannot know), but don't you think it's rash and/or arrogant to assume that we are the only self-aware "soul-searching" organism/other complex system with neural properties Again I disagree because I don't think the search ends or should end for that matter. To quote Socrates, "The wisest man is he who knows that he knows nothing" Don't attribute it to me though it was a shameless regurgitation of "it's the journey not the destination"

What if in your search you realize, there's nothing to search for - it's the search itself that matters? That's what I think. I think if you truly keep searching you will leave any semblance of modern structured religion behind and enter your own personal realm of spirituality. Possibly entirely atheistic, but nevertheless subtly spiritual in some aspects related to, say, the massiveness of the universe, the beauty of math, or the wonder of existence, biology, the mind, our day to day interactions.

these may be of interest: http://mikeschuler.site.aplus.net/id26.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number_theorem

I think I found a way to do the infinite probability, using limits which I hinted at earlier. It would work by having a set of all positive integers from 1 to N, finding probability P for an event E given N. Then take the limit of P(N) as N approaches infinity. If the limit doesn't exist, it's an "invalid infinite probability" so to speak. Here's an example based on what octopuppy was framing earlier: ~~~~~~~~~~~ If E was picking an integer divisible by 10, then P(N) = truncate(N/10) / N = (N/10 - fractional(N/10) / N When you take the limit of that as N->infinity, the fractional(N/10) is always less than 1 so becomes insignificant and the limit is (N/10)/N = 1/10 ~~~~~~~~~~~ Now considering octopuppy's paradoxical reordering: 1,10,2,20,3,30,4,40,5,50,6,60,7,70,8,80,9,90,11,100,12,110,13,120... With the new way of doing it, you have to start out finite. So either you have to skip a bunch to retain this finitely, or you have to follow the notation above and go all the way up to N, but then you have a bunch of 'unpaired' non-multiples-of-ten. Specifically the number of paired non-multiples is equal to the number of paired multiples, which can be all multiples because the multiple of ten is always bigger than its non-multiple pair. So the number of pairs is truncate(N/10) and the number of unpaired integers is N - 2*truncate(N/10), which is roughly four fifths of the set. Anyway so do the math and you get the same limit as you take N to infinity, (N/10)/N = 1/10. So you can see the real source of the paradox is that the number of unpaired integers, which is 4/5 of the set at each increasing-N finite set, can be meaninglessly zero in the infinite version of the set, because 4/5ths of infinity is meaningless.

Some of the morals are great. Others not so much. And the Bible is often toted as being "pretty historically accurate at least given the circumstances of the time" for at least the stories which are more historical and less fable, but often there is a lot of contradiction between books within the Bible, with one book contradicting what another says, about both historical things and theological concepts. But to play devil's advocate here (or in this case, God's advocate ), could it be that all these religions have a flood story because such an event did happen? (Though personally I think it's because big floods happen every now and then all over the world and are big devastating events worth writing about). It's good to stay open minded to both ends... but personally I would tell myself, never to switch because of an emotion at one point or another... only with a combination of logic and human introspection & perspective. Keep in mind, religions have a heaven-hell "carrot-stick" setup to hit you at the points when you're emotionally unstable, whereas atheism doesn't, atheism just is. So keep that in mind, if you find yourself in an extreme emotional low or high, and are looking for either a justification or explanation. Disease is close to how I think of religion - more specifically, a virus. A virus proliferates by using its host to spread and "infect". In the same manner, human "hosts" of religion think they are doing good by, say, travelling to some obscure country and converting the people. out of curiosity, how would you define spirituality? The belief in a presence of some higher order or structure? The existence of another plane of reality that interfaces with ours? Some quality that differentiates humans from other organisms?

I think you're right. I think it's impossible to "pick" a random number from an infinite distribution. How would you do it? In math a lot of times if you do an impossible operation (like dividing by zero) you end up with conflicting results... simple example: x=0 so x+x = 0 x = 2x divide both sides by x, 1 = 2 Of course, this is wrong because dividing by zero was an illegal operation. Better versions of this disguise it better and divide by x somewhere in the middle after you've forgotten that x=0, but the idea is the same. The analogue of that might be what you were saying, somehow selecting a single integer out of infinity.

Not only would that happen, but it would happen an infinity of times. That's what I've always struggled with - how you measure probability with infinities? Some probabilities are inf/inf but "infinitely likely" while others are inf/inf but only "infinitesimally likely". Is there a formulaic way to use limits to take probabilities to infinity, or are we just BSing our way through that stuff?

Yes that makes sense provided the initial condition you gave is true, but (unfortunately for your argument, fortunately for the universe and us (I think)), it's not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg's_uncertainty_principle That's what muddies the waters so to speak. I'm actually still in agreement with you, I think that these things are deterministically calculable IF you could have the info but the limit isn't on the info existing, just on the info being ascertained. I'm no physicist though, maybe someone with a better background could give us Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in layman's terms

it's possible we've evolved our receptors to match common plants or substances, instead of kind of vice versa. Or a mutually beneficial co-evolution. This is the same concept as the cannabis mystery I was talking about on the previous page. How did it happen? And I feel obligated to respond to this: There's a lot of misconception out there, one of the biggest ones is what you're getting at in the above quote. Most people I know that use drugs wouldn't say that the world isn't interesting or needs to be 'made interesting'. Instead their drug of choice (esp. marijuana) is used when they want to just relax, appreciate music, etc. As a way to enhance life further, in certain circumstances. Not to override it, nor because life is normally boring... it's also a misnomer to think of "normal life/sober world" and "drugs" as separate things, like you imply. Most of your life is heavily affected by chemicals, hormones and neurotransmitters that you might consider "artificial". When you're having a bad day, when you're having a good day, love, infatuation, sex, medicine, most of all your morning coffee (and the cycle of tolerance & addiction with caffeine), when you have a beer, when you're sick and feverish, when you use a sleeping pill or drink an 'energy blend' drink. I don't do most of those things (I don't use caffeine for example) but I understand how much that can affect me and treat substances (especially more harmful common ones such as alcohol, caffeine) without the blindfold of social stigma

Yeah still missing the point. In each of my past 5 posts I've repeated that (a) life is same or better without hallucinogens, you aren't "missing" anything, (b) you can practically function better in what we think the objective world might be, when sober. Because natural selection has found that the mindset most promotive of survival. But what I am saying is that the additional detail or revelation or "perspective" (or multiple-angled viewing of something - whether visually or conceptually) is something gone normally without when sober. That's all I'm saying lol - that we have the inherent ability to see extra but don't. Our sober mindset is a filter, filtering out what may be useless junk to an animal just trying to survive (evolution), but for a self-conscious mind who has assigned itself a purpose that may be more than just survival and reproduction, this extra "unfiltered" input may be sacred or at least, interesting.

There's nothing wrong with any of that but for now it's speculation. And yeah P != NP, but this doesn't mean we live in a non-deterministic world, just an interesting world. The world can be interesting, rich and dynamic without needing a mystic element

That's the opposite of consistency. If it's not measurable in any possible way by anything that exists in the universe, why bother assuming it exists at all? If the universe is "written" in a non-deterministic language then shouldn't we be able to create a non-deterministic language? It's absolutely a matter of complexity. When things get more complex than we are able to simply understand in a quick instant of thought, we tend to give up and assign some kind of magic or non-determinism to them in our minds, convincing ourselves that this isn't a matter of complexity, but rather is unreachably un-understandable. That kind of attitude is insulting to the efforts of those who try to understand complex systems and how they can really exist, predictably, in theoretically predictable systems. So inherently I don't think it's okay to see something hypercomplex (like the weather) and then give up trying to understand the minute factors that compose its overall behavior and how those fit together. but nevertheless I still agree with your idea that the universe may be non-deterministic (MAY be non-deterministic, I can't really know so I guess i'm "agnostic" on the matter) but not because of logic. Logic points to determinism. But experimental data points to limitation laws, like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Which I don't really understand but seem to point more in the way of non-determinism at some level. Or just the inability to read back results? There is a difference.

Speaking of personal experience - Forgive me if I'm wrong but you haven't actually tried one of these true psychedelics yourself have you? DXM is a dissociative, a different class from the psychedelics we're talking about. (tryptophan binders like LSD, psilocybin (and other DMT relatives), etc). Neither have I so neither of us can say "from personal experience" which is what we're working with here. But my point was that the chemical processes leading to the "tripping out" mindstate already exist in our brain, they're just not triggered. It's not a big deal for them not to be, like you've pointed out (and I pointed out in the original post) it's not all that useful practically, to be "trippin balls". But the machinery is there so to speak, and the chemicals just act as a catalyst to let the brain alter its own chemistry and those effects are the result. So when I said "restricted", I didn't mean in the practical sense: we're not living life any less fully with or without; I meant in the experience-sense. For the majority of our lives we're not experiencing the feedback as richly as is possible when your mind is in some states. Again that's not a bad or good thing, you don't want to be sensory-overloaded all the time or you lose touch with the more practical side of reality.

With your CS background I would think you would see that nondeterminism is more of a myth than anything. No nondeterministic computer program has ever been written to date. Complex structures can come about from deterministic equations and simple units combining in surprising ways. Such as double pendulum, turbulence, etc. Here's a thought experiment for you: what if the world was as you say 'nedeterministic'. What would be the mechanism that allows the motion of particles to 'choose'? Do conscious minds have a sway on that level? Eventually something has to get 'selected' from the possibilities. How does that selection occur? If this selection process is completely random, there is no free will. And that's not even addressing how it would be random in the first place, how anything can be truly random? On the other hand if this selection process has some kind of rule or structure to it, then it's not freely nondeterministic is it? I don't see the room for choice.

Yeah I agree, and I think a person can go through life without even hearing what a psychedelic is, and still appreciate life to the fullest. But you're also missing my point by focusing on the audiovisual aspect of psychedelics. First of all most hallucinogens, contrary to popular belief, don't actual make you see things that aren't there. Rather your standard vision is distorted and maybe abstractified or seems cartoonish or altered in some other way. But my point wasn't about seeing and hearing; I agree that our sober vision and sober hearing are pretty close to objective reality as far as we can tell. Most drugs that alter those, alter them negatively, away from what we would call reality (even if that's the intended effect). So I didn't mean the audiovisual. What I meant was the mindset, outlook, the way of thinking & doing & handling problems. In that way we are "stuck in a rut" so to speak, through our current narrow viewpoint. The rut of our day-by-day fleshing out of our routine and our routine personality. That's not a bad thing, I like my viewpoints although they are constantly evolving like everyone's (I hope), but it's just not the whole picture, not the full story that could be told. That's what I meant. But the second half of what I was talking about is more of like, do you think it's just chance that plants (ie cannabis) develop chemicals (ie THC) that happen to be psychoactive, and why. This is more of an evolutionary question

The joy is in the realization that there is no difference between "mind" and "brain" and that though our "conscious mind" may not make the decisions but it's the projection of the physical computer that makes the decisions so the electrochemical 'decisions' are exactly those that "you" would make. That's one way to think of the determinism anyway.

Here are some viewpoints on this http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/human-and-cannabis-coevolution ^ It's a nice article but doesn't seem to address why THC came about in the first place. http://blog.norml.org/2010/08/26/bbc-video-cannabis-and-human-evolution/ ^ This video (good video aside from propaganda added to the end lol) also just marvels at the chance meeting of "humans and THC", but does have some interesting information on our natural every-day endocannabinoid system.

Something I read recently raises an interesting question... say a person consumes a psychedelic compound and experiences a rare transcendental divine state of existence. This does happen, in real life, times infinity, occasionally to someone who has taken such a substance. A state of mind where the entire universe is seen within a nutshell (or rather some other multidimensional concept unexplainable to us mortals) and time and space become both infinite and zero. A state of mind where the limits of consciousness are explored and surpassed. I've never experienced such but I know people who have and I know it happens. Now... is this state of mind contained in the little atoms and energy bonds and shape of the molecule... or is this state of mind already present as a possibility within our minds, all the time? It has to be the second option, because the chemical is just a catalyst, that triggers the right neurochemical effects in the brain for our higher-level mind to experience something different from its usual reality. This potential is always there, which means, for the vast majority of our lives, our view is narrowly restricted to that which is related to our every day lives, and not fully realized. Just something to think about. It is practical. Nobody (well at least not me) would want to live forever in a state of entire rapture, a total different set of settings in the mind, because that's boring and there are no real-life accomplishments (though ones goals and motives change then too so maybe not, or rather, such thoughts don't even apply because thoughts work in a completely different way, or whatever). But what I'm saying is, this alternate consciousness isn't contained in the chemical itself but rather the interaction of the chemical and mind. It's just a catalyst for the mind to do something it normally could do (with the proper 'trigger'... near death experiences, out of body experiences and pseudo-spiritual experiences are similar in nature). I think most people see those kinds of substances as foreign invaders, bending a mind to their will, when it's more of an enabler of built-in functionality or at least possibility. You see a similar thing with all kinds of naturally grown chemicals. For example, the chemicals in the opium poppy plant (morphine, codeine, etc) must have co-evolved with humans to be desirable (by fooling the mind by pretending to be endorphins and binding to those receptors) to use, so that the plant would be protected and reproduce. Same with marijuana. Its active chemical THC already has chemical analogues inside the human body and mind, that do similar things (though less extremely), which is why it works in the first place (by binding to CB-1 and CB-2). Alcohol (ethanol) for example works by binding to GABA-A. What I think is interesting and worthy of discussion is how these plants/chemicals come to co-evolve with the human mind. Was there enough evolutionary time for that to happen, or is it coincidence? Out of thousands of plant species, we've managed to find at least a couple hundred with psychoactive properties. So is that just happy luck for us? Wikipedia speculates (about THC), "Like most pharmacologically-active secondary metabolites of plants, THC in cannabis is assumed to be involved in self-defense, perhaps against herbivores.[7] THC also possesses high UV-B (280-315 nm) absorption properties, which, it has been speculated, could protect the plant from harmful UV radiation exposure.[8] [9] [10]" What do you think?

sorry to butt in like this after such a long absence from this forum, but I'm passionate about topics like this, about our human comprehension of the universe... agreed on every point, except, oh wait. I live for myself but love for everyone. Oh and I'm not bored and I'm not disappointed. How does that factor into your claim? again agreed. Christianity is at least an improvement on the Old Testament, if only a minor improvement. But it is quite sad when people are threatened into adhering to a particular group of writings and teachings just because of the promised eternal suffering if they don't. How many people believe "just to be safe" or "just in case"? And that logic doesn't hold up either when you're talking about a global scale, about all the religions in the world. You can't go to all of their heavens. You have to pick and choose which to obey... "okay judging by my current lifestyle I'm going to the Buddhist heaven, the Muslim hell, the Westboro Baptist hell, the Pensylvania Anabaptist heaven, the Michigan presbyterian church's heaven, Greek mythology's underworld, etc etc etc". Children of a king? Lives worth saving? Neither of those phrases make any sense, especially pulled out of context like that. It's empty speak. But "a bunch of stardust" forming the beauty of the universe, and over time "just" happening to develop the intelligence to not just survive but live and think and talk about things like what we're talking about, is meaningful, important, much more than whether or not you are the "child of a king".

That's exactly the thing... most people can't even agree on a consistent definition.

yes, scientifically speaking, people are just advanced animals. But at the same time the technological and societal level of human advancement has put a whole new spin on human interpersonal relationships... I don't know how many other animals stick together for a lifelong relationship after their childbirth and childrearing jobs are done, but it seems unnatural to extend it that long. Maybe a few other species do? (Probably all of them mammals?). How many other animals have long-distance relationships? As far as I know, not many. I feel that the overlayer of human society has changed the way individuals in the society view something that was originally purely evolutionary.