Mistrust of Science - Evolution vs Creationism in the classroom

[SimbaSpice]

When computers become as intelligent as human beings in the next ~10 years, how will you rectify this materialist basis for consciousness and intelligence with your faith that a non material "soul" is what generates our consciousness?

We've been unable to grasp consciousness from a materialistic analysis, and we've been trying since the beginning of human history. I believe I've replied to you in another thread, but you didn't see it or you're conveniently ignoring it. We're also finding out that AI can't seem to function without being embodied, as without embodiment it drowns itself in an infinite sea of data and possibilities. The limitation of our embodiment is a critical condition for our consciousness to exist.

There's something about the psyche that seems to exist outside the physical plane. Carl Jung does an amazing job of explaining it. He'll put some sense into you if you're willing to admit that you're trying to use science you don't really understand as a scapegoat to nihilism as evidenced by your last thread, because that just won't get you anywhere useful. The comeback kid is mistaking abiogenesis with evolution, and should probably just be ignored as he can't seem to grasp critical thinking.

As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly. -Proverbs 26:11

You should really watch that video.

 

[Voodoo_Child906]

Not only the general public but even scientists don't know who is a fraud until they find out who falsified data in their research papers. I can totally understand the distrust.

So how do you believe we advanced this far in the sciences if fraud was such a pervasive problem?

 

[Regal Boy]

We've been unable to grasp consciousness from a materialistic analysis, and we've been trying since the beginning of human history. I believe I've replied to you in another thread, but you didn't see it or you're conveniently ignoring it. We're finding out that AI can't seem to function without being embodied, as without embodiment it drowns itself in an infinite sea of data. There's something about the psyche that seems to exist outside the physical plane. Carl Jung does an amazing job of explaining it. He'll put some sense into you if you're willing to admit that you're trying to use science you don't really understand as a scapegoat to nihilism, because that just won't get you anywhere useful. The comeback kid is mistaking abiogenesis with evolution, and really just needs to be ignored since he can't seem to grasp critical thinking.

As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly. -Proverbs 26:11

You should really watch that video.

The Universal Approximation Theorem proves that any real valued function can be approximated to any degree of accuracy by a neural network, and all human sensory data input and processing can be modeled with real valued functions. Our NN's continue to improve with no upper bound all that matters is throwing more neurons at the data set. Google is currently investing in a trillion neuron supercomputer for this very reason. These results came after Jung so it makes sense he would think there were non-mathematical or material basis for consciousness, but the "hard problem of consciousness" doesn't exist. It is simply a matter of a powerful enough computer.

I am not a nihilist.

 

[Regal Boy]

Why would the development of artificial intelligence negate the concept of human consciousness? And why are you celebrating the notion that you have no soul, no conscious, and no free will? That would mean that "you" doesn't actually exist.

It would mean that human consciousness is a matter of material information processing, rather than having an immaterial cause.

I used to have a very platonic philosophy but I have become more materialist over the past few years.

 

[Hadron90]

So how do you believe we advanced this far in the sciences if fraud was such a pervasive problem?

1. The fraud is worsening. 60 years ago maybe it wasn't so bad. Today it is.
2. Imagine how much further we could have progressed if science was divorced of fraud and politics. Emmy Noether, for example, is one of the greatest minds in the history of modern physics, and made several key insights that shaped the entire future landscape of theory. She had to fight an uphill battle to even get an education because she was a woman, and spent most of her career fighting for a professorship. Imagine how much more knowledge we could have extracted from her brilliant mind if the politics of the time weren't bent on silencing her. And there are many such examples from any period of science. Sometimes its race and gender. Sometimes its political leanings (for example, for decades in China during the cultural revolution, all Western science was taught to be fraudlent and wrong. Chinese scientists had to work without being able to study Quantum Mechanics or General Relativity, because those theories were the work of Western capitalists). So I think there is a good case to be made that scientific advancement has and continues to be retarded by fraud and censorship for purposes that have nothing to do with the merit of the science.
3. I'm not convinced that we have advanced "far" at all anyway. Everyone knows that the two greatest achievements of modern physics, General Relativity and the Standard Model, are fundamentally incompatible, and hence wrong. Modern physics tells us that the universe will spend a much greater amount of time in a period dominated entirely by black holes, than it has even existed...yet we know nothing about the physics of black holes. I think engineering feats like rocketry or semi-conductors are like a new born baby making its first twitch. It is a sign that the baby is alive, but isn't even a tiny percent of what the baby could grow into.

 

[SimbaSpice]

The Universal Approximation Theorem proves that any real valued function can be approximated to any degree of accuracy by a neural network, and all human sensory data input and processing can be modeled with real valued functions. Our NN's continue to improve with no upper bound all that matters is throwing more neurons at the data set. Google is currently investing in a trillion neuron supercomputer for this very reason. These results came after Jung so it makes sense he would think there were non-mathematical or material basis for consciousness, but the "hard problem of consciousness" doesn't exist. It is simply a matter of a powerful enough computer.

I am not a nihilist.

We're going to be the ones that embody AI based on our beliefs. The last thing you want is companies like Google who are already engaged in creating AI for censorship and mass survallience creating these supercomputers. The claim that "the hard problem with consciousness" doesn't exist is an ignorant statement, as we still don't understand consciousness at all. You cant equate rational computers like artificial intelligence with human consciousness. We are not rational beings. This is a mistake in thinking that postmodernists continue to make. What about it that Carl Jung said do you find incompatible with what we know today? You're trying to equate consciousness with computing power, but I don't understand how you drew that conclusion. You claim you're not a nihilist, but that's a hard claim to sell when you're creating threads about you have no free will and that your decisions don't matter.

 

[TheComebackKid]

It would mean that human consciousness is a matter of material information processing, rather than having an immaterial cause.

I used to have a very platonic philosophy but I have become more materialist over the past few years.

You didn't explain how the creation of artificial intelligence negates human consciousness...

 

[all caps]

Do you have a general lack of education on the subject or do you just not know what the word "religion" means?

Did you pray at the alter of your god science this morning

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

The Universal Approximation Theorem proves that any real valued function can be approximated to any degree of accuracy by a neural network, and all human sensory data input and processing can be modeled with real valued functions. Our NN's continue to improve with no upper bound all that matters is throwing more neurons at the data set. Google is currently investing in a trillion neuron supercomputer for this very reason. These results came after Jung so it makes sense he would think there were non-mathematical or material basis for consciousness, but the "hard problem of consciousness" doesn't exist. It is simply a matter of a powerful enough computer.

I am not a nihilist.

I'm with you on the AI stuff but the hard problem of consciousness has nothing to do with whether or not you can replicate a range of behaviour with any particular model.

That's the soft problem.

 

[Regal Boy]

We're going to be the ones that embody AI based on our beliefs. The last thing you want is companies like Google who are already engaged in creating AI for censorship and mass survallience creating these supercomputers. The claim that "the hard problem with consciousness" doesn't exist is an ignorant statement, as we still don't understand consciousness at all. You cant equate rational computers like artificial intelligence with human consciousness. We are not rational beings. This is a mistake in thinking that postmodernists continue to make. What about it that Carl Jung said do you find incompatible with what we know today? You're trying to equate consciousness with computing power, but I don't understand how you drew that conclusion. You claim you're not a nihilist, but that's a hard claim to sell when you're creating threads about you have no free will and that your decisions don't matter.

I agree with you about Google, I do not like them, but they're building these computers nonetheless. They should be legally regulated along with other AI companies but that's another topic.

I don't see how consciousness is different from sensory awareness and computation.

 

[Regal Boy]

You didn't explain how the creation of artificial intelligence negates human consciousness...

I don't know if "negate" is the right word but it would serve as very very very strong evidence that human consciousness is based on material behavior and not immaterial causes.

 

[Regal Boy]

I'm with you on the AI stuff but the hard problem of consciousness has nothing to do with whether or not you can replicate a range of behaviour with any particular model.

That's the soft problem.

Why is the hard problem not just a collection of soft problems?

I understand that I can't ever describe the qualia of a sensory experience, but why does that imply that the qualia isn't based on material impulses?

 

[TheComebackKid]

I don't know if "negate" is the right word but it would serve as very very very strong evidence that human consciousness is based on material behavior and not immaterial causes.

You keep saying this but you're not showing it to be true. Are you able to articulate why it would be very very strong evidence that human thought is material? It seems to me that you would need to identify what material makes up thoughts and then capture it before we can have any notion that thoughts are material.

 

[Voodoo_Child906]

1. The fraud is worsening. 60 years ago maybe it wasn't so bad. Today it is.

How are you measuring this, does it seem worse now because we have access to the Internet or is there another metric you are using?

2. Imagine how much further we could have progressed if science was divorced of fraud and politics. Emmy Noether, for example, is one of the greatest minds in the history of modern physics, and made several key insights that shaped the entire future landscape of theory. She had to fight an uphill battle to even get an education because she was a woman, and spent most of her career fighting for a professorship. Imagine how much more knowledge we could have extracted from her brilliant mind if the politics of the time weren't bent on silencing her. And there are many such examples from any period of science. Sometimes its race and gender. Sometimes its political leanings (for example, for decades in China during the cultural revolution, all Western science was taught to be fraudlent and wrong. Chinese scientists had to work without being able to study Quantum Mechanics or General Relativity, because those theories were the work of Western capitalists). So I think there is a good case to be made that scientific advancement has and continues to be retarded by fraud and censorship for purposes that have nothing to do with the merit of the science.

Any human endeavor that has a power dynamic or monetary incentives will have some forms of corruption so everyone singling out the science needs to expand their "skepticism" to every single organization on the planet. Do you feel that the entire world is dishonest conspiring and out to get the common person and that no one can be trusted? In the past 100 years, scientists have double our life expectancy, gotten us to the moon, developed modern cities, dramatically increased food production, connected the entire world, harnessed energy in ways are ancestors could not even dream of. I absolutely agree with you that fraud and censorship has hampered our advancements but no one can deny that science has advanced our society monumentally.

3. I'm not convinced that we have advanced "far" at all anyway. Everyone knows that the two greatest achievements of modern physics, General Relativity and the Standard Model, are fundamentally incompatible, and hence wrong. Modern physics tells us that the universe will spend a much greater amount of time in a period dominated entirely by black holes, than it has even existed...yet we know nothing about the physics of black holes. I think engineering feats like rocketry or semi-conductors are like a new born baby making its first twitch. It is a sign that the baby is alive, but isn't even a tiny percent of what the baby could grow into.

I really don't believe that failing to confirm a grand unified theory in the past century can be really considered a shortcoming of our scientific community. Physicists have entered domains so mind boggling small and large that observations and data are extremely difficult to come by. I really don't know how much further they can go as the data that's needed to confirm their equations simply isn't there, or maybe it's there but we don't know how to find it.

 

[Voodoo_Child906]

Did you pray at the alter of your god science this morning

You did by going on to the Internet.

 

[Regal Boy]

You keep saying this but you're not showing it to be true. Are you able to articulate why it would be very very strong evidence that human thought is material? It seems to me that you would need to identify what material makes up thoughts and then capture it before we can have any notion that thoughts are material.

Movement of electrons in your brain make up thoughts. We already know this because we can turn off your thoughts or change what your brain is capable of doing by manipulated the movement of those electrons using trans-cranial magnetic stimulation. There is a litany of research on this already.

What evidence do you have of the mind being immaterial? You had no mind before material congealed together in your mothers womb, then you grew and took in sensory experience, and as you got older and the brain and material and computation continued to develop into what you are now. When you die and your body decays and your material separates you will have no mind, consciousness, sensory experience or computation.

 

[KeepingItReal]

So how do you believe we advanced this far in the sciences if fraud was such a pervasive problem?

Please point out to me where I used the words "pervasive" and "problem".

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Why is the hard problem not just a collection of soft problems?

Whether or not it is is part of of the problem!

I suspect it is, in the sense that if you developed the hardware that could replicate all the requisite behaviour and somehow had evidence that you weren't also recreating the subjective experience, it would be just be a matter of reconfiguring the underlying materials.

I understand that I can't ever describe the qualia of a sensory experience, but why does that imply that the qualia isn't based on material impulses?

Honestly I only bring it up because the theologically-inclined among us will almost definitely use it as an escape - ie. an AI operator externally indistinguishable from a human is still not a human by virtue (vice?) of not having the same experience or not having been assigned a soul by God.

 

[Hadron90]

How are you measuring this, does it seem worse now because we have access to the Internet or is there another metric you are using?

On a per capita basis, I'm not sure. But in terms of just sheer volume of shit that is published, retractionwatch does an awesome of exposing it. Here is a good NYT article on the recent Lancet HydroxyCloroquine retraction, and a quote from the author of RetractionWatch.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/virus-journals.html

“But peer review fails more often than anyone admits,” he said. “We should be surprised it catches anything at all, the way it’s set up.”

Journals used to take many months, or even a full year, to scrutinize and edit a complicated study, a process that included several weeks for outside experts to peer review the research.

Now peer review may be condensed to as little as 48 hours; some studies deemed of vital importance to patients may be published online within 20 days of submission.

There are mountains of garbage being published these days because academics are encouraged to focus on volume over quality, journal standards have plummeted, and there are so many journals. Even if you fail peer-review in 4 journals, there are always 100 others you can try and you'll get published in one just based off statistics alone. And that would arguably be fine, except that these low-impact shitty papers are used to shape opinion and policy. If we taught the public to be both scientifically literate and also skeptical, its fine if everything gets published. People would know to take it with a grain of salt. But that isn't how we teach to people approach science anymore. The publically is told that science is above reproach, and if an "expert" says, it must be true.

Any human endeavor that has a power dynamic or monetary incentives will have some forms of corruption so everyone singling out the science needs to expand their "skepticism" to every single organization on the planet. Do you feel that the entire world is dishonest conspiring and out to get the common person and that no one can be trusted? In the past 100 years, scientists have double our life expectancy, gotten us to the moon, developed modern cities, dramatically increased food production, connected the entire world, harnessed energy in ways are ancestors could not even dream of. I absolutely agree with you that fraud and censorship has hampered our advancements but no one can deny that science has advanced our society monumentally.

Most of what stuff you cite happened around the mid-century. Since then, we have stagnated. The last humans landed on the moon almost 50 years ago. The Saturn V rocket that took them still hasn't been surpassed in power. Life expectency saw a linear increase starting early in the century, but has since leveled off, and is even decreasing in some areas. Most of the things on your least are just advances in engineering or logistics. It isn't new fundamental science that provides increased insights into the cosmos. And I don't think technological progress is proof you are right about the underlying science either. People have always made technological progress on flawed ideas. People were building catapults well before calculus came along. People were breeding crops and livestock well before we know what DNA was. Any of these cultures could have used these advances to argue that their superstitious worldviews or flawed science was actually correct.

I really don't believe that failing to confirm a grand unified theory in the past century can be really considered a shortcoming of our scientific community. Physicists have entered domains so mind boggling small and large that observations and data are extremely difficult to come by. I really don't know how much further they can go as the data that's needed to confirm their equations simply isn't there, or maybe it's there but we don't know how to find it.

I don't know if shortcoming is the word I would use because I don't know if we could have been expected to do better. But I do think it is hubris to stand tall and boast about having the wrong answer. I think we are grading ourselves on a curve. Like you can teach a dog a service to understand traffic lights. Smart dog capable of learning? Sure. But will that dog ever understand algebra? Its not even close. The dog will never even be able to conceive that algebra exists as a concept. Likewise you can teach a human algebra, but what higher forms of thought and science are outside of our ability to grasp even if it were handed to us?

 

[DoomPatrol]

I never understood how religious people can insist that something with properties of the universe requires some sort of intelligent design from some entity, but they don't see the irony in simultaneously holding that belief without thinking that said entity wouldn't need its own intelligent designer.

The biggest issue they also fail to grasp is that if there were an entity that we discovered under scientific scrutiny, then that's fine. The universe being "all things" would now include said entity and we could start using science to discover how that entity exists.

The real biggest issue is that religion is fucking stupid and you have to be gullible as fuck to believe that nonsense when we're sending technology to Mars and have quantum computers.