Government for the people. How?

[Izzy]

The objective of this thread is to altruistically* design a political structure wherein the needs and interests of EVERY inhabitant of this country are met. (None of this "general public" crap, we should try to make everyone happy. ) It's impossible to not be aware of how inconceivable this sounds, but I think by being mindful of what we're trying to accomplish, but.. just might be feasible?**

Now, before we can even begin devising laws, creating our constitution, bill of rights, etc., I think it's best we assemble a list of what people want from their government. Feel free to contribute ANYTHING. (I stole some of these from the world's smallest political quiz and the bill of rights. >_>)

1. Government should not censor speech, press, media, or internet.
2. Military service should be voluntary.
3. There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults, where a consenting adult is anyone of 16 years of age or older.
4. Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.
5. End government barriers to international free trade.
6. Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.
7. Keep government welfare, but no taxation without representation.
8. Freedom of speech, religion, sexuality, peaceful protests, and petition.
9. Soldiers may not be quartered in a house without the consent of the owner.
10. People may not be unreasonably searched or kept in captivity.
11. The right to a free, public, and speedy trial.
12. Laws are to remain the same from State to State.
13. Eventual globalization is a priority.

*We can get into the semantics of altruism later. I have.. mixed feelings, but this most closely elucidates my intentions. (Lol, I swear, I bounce back and forth from being the apathetic hippy civilian who just wants to live to the extremely fervent humanitarian practically daily. >_>)
** Eh, truthfully, it isn't. Too many people disagree on matters of religion, which define the moral code for a LOT of people (even if they don't strictly adhere to it, haha). We need to agree now to define morals for ourselves and not base them off of religious texts. Like, if someone proposes "Don't kill", that's perfectly acceptable, and I expect it to be fully ratified. If someone else suggests "Love God", this is more open to debate. While you can submit ideas that coincide with religious texts, submit them because they are mandates you want and agree with, not just because your scripture of choice tells you to follow them.

Edited February 13, 2014 by bonanova

[Izzy]

...Ffs. I convince myself to go offline, have one more idea, type it out, and then Firefox crashed. Okay, here we go again. My example includes an experiment and a set of twins.

Imagine I conduct an experiment, it doesn't matter what, every five years. The experiment uses identical products, and is carried out exactly the same (to the best of ability human error allows). Since I can't use the same materials, the materials I use are from different manufacturers, wrapped differently, etc. Basically, the only sense in which they are alike is that they are the same thing. Okay, cool, easy enough to understand. My results from these experiments are very similar, differing only in decimal places, if at all. From a deterministic view, this makes perfect sense.

Now, consider a pair of twins, created, carried, and born identically. Exposed to the same everything. When born, why do they differ so immensely? From other experiments, it would make sense that twin A's favorite color is dark blue while twin B's favorite color is the same blue, one shade lighter. This is pretty much never the case with twins. Okay, you can argue they've been exposed to different things as they've grown up. But what about the noticeable personality differences as babies? A deterministic world means they'd be similar, but the two think differently, meaning consciousness is.. special. So, either the mind transcends the laws of physics (it *can't*), or we have free will.

[Izzy]

The future is not predetermined, but it is determined meaning that the present state of the universe can only result in one possible future.

Disagree. There's a possibility of multiple futures, and while only one will come true, that doesn't mean others didn't have the chance of also becoming true. ...I can't explain it, but neither can you, so I think it's safe to assume the only fair stance here is free-will agnostic, until someone comes up with an actual explanation. I think.. that.. eugh I don't know what I think.

[Izzy]

Bah. Lack of free will (still agnostic on the issue) makes the universe even more pointless than it already is. I mean, not only is there already no point, no underlying reason, no purpose, no reason for survival. That I could handle, it meant I was justified to have fun. Now there's the possibility that I don't even control myself and my actions; that I do everything I do because of circumstances I have no control over? Feh. If that's the case, the universe is some cruel joke, and I don't know.. if.. I.. want to participate. =/

[Guest]

(Note: I just wrote four posts that repeat themselves a little bit so you might want to read them all before beginning to write any reply. This will save you time and minimize our discussion so it is more concise. I probably should have done the same to your posts, but I didn't... and this mess (this post and the next few) is the result. Also note that these four posts don't appear in the order that I wrote them. This is because I replied to your posts in the wrong order and so I went back to your original post and replied to it last, but submitted it first. However, I think I submitted one of them at the wrong time so they might quote you in the correct order either. So just read them in order, but ignore the order and don't reply until you've read everything I said . Thanks, and sorry again about my failures to write concisely .)

Actually, I think I read something about this at one point. Off to raid mah bookshelf.

Ah, okay, found it. Read this in the full. From Quantum: A Guide For the Complexed

Sorry this got so lengthy, I was trying to be entirely clear. I didn't have time to finish writing it (there's a note at the bottom), but.. I'll get there eventually.

"In fact, until the quantum revolution, scientists were confident that [predicting the future] was indeed possible in principle, suggesting that even if we could not predict them all future events were preordained and destined to take place.

Isaac Newton believed that every particle in the Universe should obey simple laws of motion subject to well-defined forces. This mechanistic view - one that is still shared universally by scientists and philosophers more than two centuries later - states that no matter how complex the working of nature are, everything should be ultimately reducible to interactions between the fundamental building blocks of matter. [...] But in principle, if we could know the precise position and state of motion of every particle in a give system, no matter how many are involved, then we should be able to predict, through Newton's laws, how these particles will interact and move, and hence how the system will look at any given time in the future. [...] This is known as determinism. [...] Indeed, simple mechanistic examples, such as the ones [that Izzy omitted] pale to insignificance when we consider how we might deal with the immense complexity of the human brain in order to understand the nation of free will. But the principle is always the same: since humans are ultimately made up of atoms too then Newton's laws should also apply in our brains. So when we make what we perceive to be a free choice about something, this is simply the mechanical process and atomic interactions in our grey matter following deterministic laws just like everything else.

[...] One of the most profound changes in human thinking brought about by the quantum revolution was the notion of indeterminism - that is, the disappearance of determinism, along with the concept of the clockwork universe. So I am sorry to break the news to you, but 'fate' as a scientific idea was proven to be false three-quarts of a century ago. In quantum mechanics, things are very different. Let us take a closer look at the origin of quantum unpredictability and indeterminism.

*describes determinism again and the accuracy of Newton's laws on macro objects, showing how accurately we can predict things if all knowledge is known*

So why can we not apply the same equation to describe the way a microscopic particle, such as an electron, moves? If the electron moves over here now, and we apply a certain force to it, for instance by switching on an electric field, then we should be able to say for definitite that it will be in such and such location five seconds from now. Not so. It turns out that the equations that govern the behavior of everyday objects, from grains of sand to footballs to planets, are useless in the quantum world.

Paraphrasing: Shrodinger didn't like de Broglie or Bohr's idea, so devised a new equation that describes not the way a particle moves, but the way a wave evolves.

Solving the Shrodinger equation provides us with a mathetmatical quantity called the wave function. This is where all probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics comes in. For the case of an electron, for instance, the wave function does not give us the precise location at a moment in time, only the likelihood of the electron being found somewhere if we were to look for it there."

..And oh my god, I am bored of typing. Picture instead, yeah?

...Stupid pictures didn't upload.

..And oh my god, it takes this dude like the rest of the book to sum up what he's saying. I read this in like 6th grade, and don't remember enough to do it justice myself. D: ...But.. yeah. Idk. I seriously have to do homework now, I might post more exerts of the book when I have the time.

Interesting for sure. You caused me to spend about half an hour reading parts of several Wikipedia articles on this subject. As a result, I have become less confident in my guess that determinism is true. In fact, largely due to the Wikipedia articles that you incited me to read with this post, I have become doubtful enough that I remove my guess and now deem myself solely an agnostic on the issue of determinism/indeterminism. (Note: I was agnostic before, but I was an agnostic determinist (in the sense that I am an agnostic atheist)... showing that I was agnostic, but cautioning on the side of determinism (or cautioning on the side of atheism). Actually, I see flaws in this comparison, so ignore those flaws if you spot any and just understand that I withdraw my guess that the universe is deterministic).

In response to your bold statement about it being proven 75 years ago that determinism is false:

Did you add that or was it in the book?

I disagree that it was proven false. I think it's an example of something that is unable to be proved false. For example, even with the quantum indeterminacy stuff, it's possible that the probability distributions "on the set of outcomes of measurements of an observable" (Wikipedia: "Quantum indeterminacy can be quantitatively characterized by a probability distribution on the set of outcomes of measurements of an observable." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminism ), that is seemingly the "random" stuff in the universe, could possibly not be random, but rather just another deterministically pseudo-random thing that makes us observe a probability distribution and conclude that the universe is random. In other words, we can't know for certain whether the apparent "randomness" that we are seeing on the quantum level is actually randomness--for all we know it may just be more unpredictable deterministic stuff (and by unpredictable, I mean to describe the possible nature of the universe... i.e. it is impossible to predict the two properties of the electron simultaneously from within the universe... therefore, we may still see something that appears to be a probability distribution, but that doesn't mean that there has to be actual randomness there... it could still be deterministic and just plain old unpredictable).

Anyways, because I don't feel very knowledgeable at all on the subject (I can barely figure out what they're trying to tell me in those Wikipedia articles), I change my stance to purely agnostic on whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic. Free will though, I would say does not exist.

Edited August 17, 2010 by Use the Force

[Guest]

...Ffs. I convince myself to go offline, have one more idea, type it out, and then Firefox crashed. Okay, here we go again. My example includes an experiment and a set of twins.

Imagine I conduct an experiment, it doesn't matter what, every five years. The experiment uses identical products, and is carried out exactly the same (to the best of ability human error allows). Since I can't use the same materials, the materials I use are from different manufacturers, wrapped differently, etc. Basically, the only sense in which they are alike is that they are the same thing. Okay, cool, easy enough to understand. My results from these experiments are very similar, differing only in decimal places, if at all. From a deterministic view, this makes perfect sense.

Now, consider a pair of twins, created, carried, and born identically. Exposed to the same everything. When born, why do they differ so immensely? From other experiments, it would make sense that twin A's favorite color is dark blue while twin B's favorite color is the same blue, one shade lighter. This is pretty much never the case with twins. Okay, you can argue they've been exposed to different things as they've grown up. But what about the noticeable personality differences as babies? A deterministic world means they'd be similar, but the two think differently, meaning consciousness is.. special. So, either the mind transcends the laws of physics (it *can't*), or we have free will.

Uh, I have to definitely disagree. Butterfly effect, chaos theory? I would say that such example scenarios are pretty meaningless to a debate about determinism vs in-determinism. A deterministic world doesn't mean they'd be similar anyways... they could be entirely different due to an extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.

[Guest]

Bah. Lack of free will (still agnostic on the issue) makes the universe even more pointless than it already is. I mean, not only is there already no point, no underlying reason, no purpose, no reason for survival. That I could handle, it meant I was justified to have fun. Now there's the possibility that I don't even control myself and my actions; that I do everything I do because of circumstances I have no control over? Feh. If that's the case, the universe is some cruel joke, and I don't know.. if.. I.. want to participate. =/

Oh come on, this is no reason to have a pessimistic outlook on the universe. I wouldn't say that no free will is a bad thing at all.

No, you do have a control over your actions. To see this, imagine for a moment that our universe definitely is deterministic and there is a "God" of our universe who can observe it without effecting it. Let's also say that he made another copy of our universe because he liked the first one so much that he wanted to observe it again. This second time through, he knows all of the choices that Izzy is going to make because of the deterministic nature of the universe. But, does this mean that you have no choice? Of course not. We make choices every day. This just means that you don't have a free choice because there is only one possible future that you will choose. However, because you don't know the future, then you ARE free to do whatever you want. You'll just end up choosing to do what God knew you would do. For a poor analogy, you could think of yourself as a prisoner behind bars who doesn't know he is behind bars and can't ever find or touch the bars because he cannot predict the future from within his own universe (only God outside the universe can do that). So you're a prisoner, but you never think, "Oh, I wish I could do this, but there are these bars in my way." You don't know where the bars are until you look back on the past and see that the bars are across every event that didn't happen. So I wouldn't say that you're a prisoner really at all. I think the freedom that you would experience as an average kid who doesn't ponder such philosophical subjects is what the term "free will" attempts to describe. For that definition, I would say that "free will" is real--it's a real illusion. If you define free will as the illusion that it is possible that you can either raise your hand or not raise it, then I would say that free will exists. I will also say that it IS true that you can choose between either raising your hand or not raising your hand. This isn't technically a "free" choice because God already knows which one you are going to choose, but from your perspective you get to experience the illusion that people call "free will" because you never know that the other choice (raising your hand or not raising your hand) is impossible until AFTER you choose to do the other thing (e.g. you never know that it was impossible for you to not raise your hand until you actually choose to raise your hand and then look back on what you decided not to do). This free will illusion is reason to not feel like a prisoner of fate and is reason to be optimistic about the universe. I don't think that determinism or your choices being random (thus no free will) is reason to be depressed or anything.

[Guest]

"The future is not predetermined, but it is determined meaning that the present state of the universe can only result in one possible future."-Me

Disagree. There's a possibility of multiple futures, and while only one will come true, that doesn't mean others didn't have the chance of also becoming true. ...I can't explain it, but neither can you, so I think it's safe to assume the only fair stance here is free-will agnostic, until someone comes up with an actual explanation. I think.. that.. eugh I don't know what I think.

I was just clearing up your use of "predetermined." I never said that I thought that the universe was predetermined. Rather, I said I thought that it might be determined. There's a difference between the meanings of the two words.

Multiple futures would be assuming that the universe is indeterminate. My quote was assuming that a deterministic world and was only meant to say that there is a difference between determinism and predeterminism.

Free-will agnostic? Well perhaps, but only because our definition of "free will" is unclear. In the way that I define it (to myself, not in English... English is too difficult for me to use to define it well), I am very confident that it does NOT exist, because it would NOT exist according to my definition if the world was either deterministic or random. Randomness doesn't give us free will. Something else would have to give us "free will" and I can't imagine what that might be. If there's something that gives humans free will (whatever that is again), then I would think that everything in the universe has free will in which case I'm not sure why we'd call whatever that "free will" thing is "free will." "Free will" seems like something to do with humans, but quantum indeterminacy describes the fundamental nature of the universe on its most basic levels. I'm not sure why this would ONLY cause large macroscopic complex human minds to possess free will ("ONLY" rather than inanimate objects as well). So I wouldn't say that I'm a free will agnostic. I still would disagree that such a thing exists. I suppose I am an agnostic on determinism/indeterminism though, although if I had to guess (silly guesses) I would still guess determinism. I'm agnostic on that though. But, on "free will" I think it doesn't exist. Of course, if you defined "free will" strangely then I'm sure I would in some circumstances agree that it exists.

[gvg]

(I might have said all of this already, so please ignore it if I did; I'm too lazy to check )

I agree with Izzy on the multiple choices thing. To me, the universe is not 100% anything (deterministic or random). And...

Bah. Darn English language. Once again, I explain it better in the evidence of God's design thread. It does sound better when it's in your thoughts =)

[Guest]

I agree with Izzy on the multiple choices thing. To me, the universe is not 100% anything (deterministic or random).

There was poor communication of my meaning. Either the universe is 100% deterministic, or it is 100% indeterministic because there is some element of true randomness (note: randomness is indeterministic) somewhere in it. So if there's any element of randomness in the universe at all, then the universe is 100% considered to be indeterministic and determinism is considered to be false. So if there is any randomness at all in the universe, then determinism is considered false (even with a lot of cause and effect that holds true a lot of events that are somewhat predictable). So it's either COMPLETELY deterministic or else the concept "determinism" is considered to be completely false.

So after this attempt at clarification, I hope you change your statement (in your mind) from, "To me, the universe is not 100% anything (deterministic or random)," to "To me, like to you, the universe is either 100% deterministic or else is 100% indeterministic (because of an element of randomness somewhere (or possibly something else))."

If you still don't see what I'm saying because you think that there is something partial about this (not 100%), then realize that partial stuff means that the universe is indeterministic, NOT part deterministic part indeterministic.

At least, this is my understanding of the terminology. I think it makes sense.

[gvg]

I meant to say neither 100% chance nor 100% predetermined (thus, I suppose, indeterministic).

Better?

Edited August 17, 2010 by gvg

[unreality]

I just came across of an example of what I would consider highly complex (not to mention awesome!) http://lab.andre-michelle.com/pulsate

[gvg]

Pretty cool =)

[Izzy]

Need to leave for the school bus in like two minutes, so making this quit (and sort as a result =/), but determinism itself was proven wrong. It's impossible to know both the location and velocity of a particle, and because the particle has a wavefunction, it doesn't exactly behave like a particle at all, and as far as anyone understands, *it* doens't even know where it is, and likely doesn't have a single location, so even if we had a super computer large enough with all possible information plugged into it, we still woudn't know enough to predict the future. Not because we don't have enough information, but simply because it's impossible to know the speed and velocity, meaning we only either know where it is or how fast it's going (but not where). Even if this super computer was God (if he existed), he, in his infinite knowledge, wouldn't know. So, I'm an indeterminist, and free will agnostic. Which is what I meant, but I think I wrote it backwards.

[unreality]

Need to leave for the school bus in like two minutes, so making this quit (and sort as a result =/), but determinism itself was proven wrong. It's impossible to know both the location and velocity of a particle, and because the particle has a wavefunction, it doesn't exactly behave like a particle at all, and as far as anyone understands, *it* doens't even know where it is, and likely doesn't have a single location, so even if we had a super computer large enough with all possible information plugged into it, we still woudn't know enough to predict the future. Not because we don't have enough information, but simply because it's impossible to know the speed and velocity, meaning we only either know where it is or how fast it's going (but not where)

Yes, this is the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that I/we have been talking about I was saying that the only source of randomness I could think of would be a combo attack of CHAOS and the UNCERTAINTY, meaning the initial sensitivity to something that cannot truly be known could lead to something crazy like true randomness, but I also said it was mere speculation and that I didn't know and that I didn't think there was an official scientific position either way. Is it so hard to accept the state of not knowing? And if has been "proven wrong", could you show some evidence suggesting this please? If it really has I would be very interested and excited

[Guest]

Yes, this is the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that I/we have been talking about I was saying that the only source of randomness I could think of would be a combo attack of CHAOS and the UNCERTAINTY, meaning the initial sensitivity to something that cannot truly be known could lead to something crazy like true randomness, but I also said it was mere speculation and that I didn't know and that I didn't think there was an official scientific position either way. Is it so hard to accept the state of not knowing? And if has been "proven wrong", could you show some evidence suggesting this please? If it really has I would be very interested and excited

Yes, I agree with unreality. I don't think that the wave function for the position/velocity of an electron and the probability distribution that our modern quantum physics calculates for its position (given certainty of its velocity, or vice versa) necessarily mean that the universe is actually truly "random" on the quantum level. I don't think that the common view among scientists is this either. Quantum physics definitely cast more doubt on determinism, but it by no means proved it wrong, as you say. There is no consensus at all (as far as I know) that the universe is indeterministic (as would be the case if it wasn't deterministic). I think the scientific community is agnostic as well for the moment.

[Guest]

I don't have much to say here except that it was a nice read between here and Wikipedia...

I guess (after reading a bit) that I agree that the quantum level is where determinism could be put in doubt, although (correct me if I'm wrong) it hasn't been 100% proved yet. So... If it was proved that at a quantum level determinism is false and randomness (at some level) does indeed occur, could we say at that point that the whole universe is based on randomness? Or will we only say that randomness exists, BUT, only at the quantum level?

Is it wrong to state at different levels (quantum and mechanics (newtonian)) different laws apply? I'm curious about this... I'm inclined to say yes, because (as far as I know) at particle level everything is governed by the newtonian laws, but at quantum level it's a whole different story.

Am I wrong here?

Edited August 17, 2010 by JarZe

[unreality]

I don't have much to say here except that it was a nice read between here and Wikipedia...

I guess (after reading a bit) that I agree that the quantum level is where determinism could be put in doubt, although (correct me if I'm wrong) it hasn't been 100% proved yet. So... If it was proved that at a quantum level determinism is false and randomness (at some level) does indeed occur, could we say at that point that the whole universe is based on randomness? Or will we only say that randomness exists, BUT, only at the quantum level?

Is it wrong to state at different levels (quantum and mechanics (newtonian)) different laws apply? I'm curious about this... I'm inclined to say yes, because (as far as I know) at particle level everything is governed by the newtonian laws, but at quantum level it's a whole different story.

Am I wrong here?

the greatest challenge in physics of the last 100 years has been trying to unite the macroscopic scale (from bouncing beach balls to colossal galaxies) with the quantum scale (the crazy forces and wave particles of the inner atom's world). There have been many theories but I don't think any have truly "united" the cosmos with the quarks

[unreality]

On a more political note I just stumbled upon a pretty interesting article/propaganda/whateveryouwanttocallit: http://www.radical.org.uk/anarchism/

[Guest]

So... If it was proved that at a quantum level determinism is false and randomness (at some level) does indeed occur, could we say at that point that the whole universe is based on randomness? Or will we only say that randomness exists, BUT, only at the quantum level?

We would say that the entire universe was indeterministic and because there is some element of randomness present at the quantum level. This randomness on the quantum level would cause our macro-scale events to still be indeterministic, even if we can roughly predict certain things--any randomness means the universe is indeterministic.

Is it wrong to state at different levels (quantum and mechanics (newtonian)) different laws apply? I'm curious about this... I'm inclined to say yes, because (as far as I know) at particle level everything is governed by the newtonian laws, but at quantum level it's a whole different story.

Am I wrong here?

Umm, well... We know that Newtonian physics is wrong, however even though we know it's wrong, it's still accurate enough on the macro-scale that it can get us to the moon and whatnot--therefore, we still continue to use it. On the quantum scale, etc, Newtonian physics becomes obviously flawed, and so we use quantum physics instead. We don't know whether our current quantum physics is correct or flawed (theories can only be proven false, never true). So you're correct in that Newtonian physics only works well on the macro scale, but in reality Newtonian physics is definitely wrong... so you'd be wrong in saying that the universe operates under different physical laws at different "levels." It is true though, that depending on the "level" of your perspective, Newtonian physics may or may not roughly apply.

[Izzy]

Hey, I might have to drop this thread because it's too time consuming and I don't really have time for the internet if I want good grades, enough sleep, and a social life.

[gvg]

Completely understand =)

It is getting pretty random anyway...

[gvg]

Unreality: Interesting, but for the reasons we discussed with UtF's original idea, not possible.

And they toss around the word 'utopia' a lot. Let's be honest: There's no such thing as a utopia, nor will there ever be (well, I believe in heaven but let's not get into that =)).

[unreality]

Unreality: Interesting, but for the reasons we discussed with UtF's original idea, not possible.

And they toss around the word 'utopia' a lot. Let's be honest: There's no such thing as a utopia, nor will there ever be (well, I believe in heaven but let's not get into that =)).

actually, your parenthetical is really interesting. Can you define the differences you believe exist in heaven that suddenly make a utopia possible? Do you believe you still have the ability to think, remember and make critical decisions in heaven?

[Guest]

Do you believe you still have the ability to think, remember and make critical decisions in heaven?

Mmm interesting. If heaven really exists, I doubt that it's a physical place where you'll hang out with your friends and stuff like that. If you ask me its more probable that what we call heaven is a state of the soul (if that makes any sense, which to me it doesn't at the moment). So in order for us to define a heaven we must first define the soul. What exactly is the soul? How can we define it, if there's such a concept.

Thoughts?

[gvg]

Unreality: yes. To me, heaven is a true utopia. You don't really need to fight over anything, as it is provided to you (if you even need things like food or water). Everyone is happy. In this way, it is a Utopia. I don't know what the standard definition is, but I define a utopia as a place where there is always a sense of peace, tranquility, and happiness that never wavers; all that anyone ever truly wants in life, which they try to achieve through things like money and supposed 'perfect' governments.

Of course, there is no proof for or against heaven and hell until we die and find out, so I guess there are no proven utopias.

Anyway, don't fuss over the religious stuff too much, although...

Jarze: ...that is an interesting question. I think it is the truest essence of a person, something that cannot be seen or judged until we reach heaven, if there is one. It isn't really a physical entity, more like a recording, a sorta invisible movie. There is a good chance, to me, that there could be two souls: A physical that is rewarded or punished based on what is recorded on the other one. The former is the one that can 'think, remember, and make critical decisions in heaven.'

Once again, though, I am forced to take the agnostic stance on this, although I lean towards the side of its existence.

Edited August 18, 2010 by gvg