On the socialization of children

[Freeky]

LDS membership is down, to the extent that they are reluctant to excommunicate people who used to get booted in a hot second. It's not even enough just to be GAY anymore; they demand that you actually be having hot gay sex, AND that you prove it.

BAH!  They aren't serious about this shit.

It's a numbers game. They should try giving out addictive shit, like the tobacco companies.

"If only we had their numbers!"
                \

[Triple Zero]

In addition, without any available, testable, replicable evidence of the latter theory, then we have to fall back on Parsimony.  Which means that the simplest explanation with the least amount of conjecture is Kai's position.

What?! Why?

Occam's razor is the biggest cop-out mechanism in science.

Who decides what is considered "simplest" and what is "least amount of conjecture"?

"When parsimony ceases to be a guideline and is instead elevated to an ex cathedra pronouncement, parsimony analysis ceases to be science."

There you go. Some dude quoted on Wikipedia said it already. Thing is, this parsimony is perfectly able to strongly support false conclusions and therefore we don't "have to" fall back onto it whenever, whereever, and especially not in circumstances where it makes no sense.

There is nothing wrong with just admitting "I don't know", yeah?

Of course, Science can't deal with that, but that doesn't mean we should.

Hey and what is conjecture? Isn't that the things an explanation can't account for and therefore has to be al hand-wavy? Because I bet the biological/neurological basis for consciousness has a LOT more of that than certain spiritual explanations.

I'm real glad I'm no longer doing this Science shit, btw. It's grown real smelly.

[Cain]

Well "in accordance with our current understanding of science" is certainly more simple than "a metaphysical existence after death, which would require the reworking of how we understand basic physics and biology".

If you have to rewrite a substansial amount of rules for your theory to make sense, and you don't have the evidence to support a change in those rules, then, uh yeah, the more simple idea within that understood parameter is probably the best one to go for, unless you find explanations like "because a wizard did it" more convincing.

I would've thought this was pretty simple and obvious myself. 

But this thread has already passed the point of "zomg u haz offended my precious beliefz" with plenty of butthurt and entrenched positions on every side, so I don't expect this to be paid any attention to. 

[LMNO]

In addition, without any available, testable, replicable evidence of the latter theory, then we have to fall back on Parsimony.  Which means that the simplest explanation with the least amount of conjecture is Kai's position.

What?! Why?

Occam's razor is the biggest cop-out mechanism in science.

Who decides what is considered "simplest" and what is "least amount of conjecture"?

"When parsimony ceases to be a guideline and is instead elevated to an ex cathedra pronouncement, parsimony analysis ceases to be science."

There you go. Some dude quoted on Wikipedia said it already. Thing is, this parsimony is perfectly able to strongly support false conclusions and therefore we don't "have to" fall back onto it whenever, whereever, and especially not in circumstances where it makes no sense.

There is nothing wrong with just admitting "I don't know", yeah?

Of course, Science can't deal with that, but that doesn't mean we should.

Hey and what is conjecture? Isn't that the things an explanation can't account for and therefore has to be al hand-wavy? Because I bet the biological/neurological basis for consciousness has a LOT more of that than certain spiritual explanations.

I'm real glad I'm no longer doing this Science shit, btw. It's grown real smelly.

Easy, now.  Take a breath.

I'm not saying that Parsimony gives you the "right" answer, and that we should stop asking questions.

And, for the record, science is entirely based around "I don't know."

That is to say, "I don't know, and I want to find out."

The fewer untestable elements in a hypothesis means a smaller margin of error to account for, which means the more accurate any tests you can perform will be.

Testable: if electrical activity in the brain ceases after death.
Testable: the long-term coherence of electrical patterns after the energy source has depleted.
Untestable: YHVH carries your soul to heaven.
Untestable: Your heart is weighed, and you are reborn in accordance to how you lived your previous life.


While the two untestable hypotheses may be true, we cannot speak to that, because there is no way of testing that.  Because you can't test it, then it is scientifically meaningless (which I guess is another way of saying "I don't know").  You can't say it's true, and you can't say it's false.  

The question at hand is, "What happens after you die?"  That question can be answered objectively through observation and testing, without speculation.  It can be answered scientifically, up to a point.  After that point, it can no longer be answered scientifically.  

After that point, it becomes a matter of speculation, faith, and imagination.  Which is great, but becomes subject to emotional argument, rather than rational.

[Triple Zero]

Okay okay, taking a breath

Ok, I see where you're going, but:

If Sagan was alive and one of his ideas was proven wrong, then he would be able to change his conciousness to accomodate this new information.

Now that Sagan is dead, if one of his ideas is proven wrong, his conciousness cannot change to accomodate this new information.

It depends on how you look at it, really.

Let's take Jesus Christ as an example, assuming he he was a singular real person two millennia ago, being somewhat of a charismatic rebel/cult leader who also happened to have some pretty good ideas about how great it would be if everybody would just be nice to eachother.

Now the ideas, and consciousness of Jesus Christ live on in a shitload of people's minds.

And you bet that if one of his ideas is proven wrong, that consciousness changes to accomodate to the new information.

Now the consciousness may not accomodate in a very sensible way, or perhaps even in the way the alive Jesus Christ would have had it, but nobody ever argued that consciousness after death will function in the same way as it did when alive.


One interesting thing about this, btw. If you look at my first paragraph, I made an assumption about his life. It might not be true, but it has no real consequences for his today consciousness, Christianity. He could have been a space alien, or maybe five guys whose stories sort of glommed together. So there's a disconnect. It's all really interesting, and for real.

Well "in accordance with our current understanding of science" is certainly more simple than "a metaphysical existence after death, which would require the reworking of how we understand basic physics and biology".

If you have to rewrite a substansial amount of rules for your theory to make sense, and you don't have the evidence to support a change in those rules, then, uh yeah, the more simple idea within that understood parameter is probably the best one to go for, unless you find explanations like "because a wizard did it" more convincing.

I would've thought this was pretty simple and obvious myself.

Yes that's right.

Except that while "in accordance with our current understanding of science" is indeed really simple, it is also not really an explanation of where consciousness comes from. They just know the neurons and physics and biology there don't do anything unexpected, yet if they kill/switch them off, consciousness goes (partially) away.

What's left is a big glaring question of "what exactly is this consciousness, how does it work, and where does it come from?", and so far Science's answer to this question is that "it's really, really complex".

Now while I agree with these conclusions myself, I can't really call this the "simplest explanation".

Then, for my own beliefs, I augment these conclusions with a bunch of spiritual ideas I came up with myself. They don't really require a reworking of basic physics or biology, though. And when anyone asks me how they work, I can honestly answer "it's really, really complex" *




* seriously. part of it is the belief that consciousness can exist in other media than neural matter, or biological matter. I find if you reason this out for a while, you can account for a whole lot of the "energy" and "resonations" and "entities" and stuff you find in a lot of spiritual systems. not all of it. some is just bullshit. and then because some people didn't pick that up and wrote books about it anyway, you got bullshit mixed up with the bits that actually do make sense and can be valuable to learn. all in all, it's really really complex. one quick bullshit test, though: if it requires you to rewrite ideas about physics, it's probably bullshit.

[LMNO]

It is indeed extremely complex, but I think where we might have missed each other's point is that in this case "simplest" means "least amount of pure guessing".  All that complexity can be tested; or at least, they can envision a way to test it.  Coming up with a hypothesis that uses the least amount of untestable ideas is usually the best way to go, because you can eventually test it, and then adjust your ideas to fit the results.  But it sounds like you already agree with that, so I'll stop there.

The rest of your post, to me, falls in the realm of philosophy and subjective ideas.  Which I love, and which I'm happy to talk about.  So if you want to go there, I'm down.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

We can answer "What happens to your physical body when/after you die?" via observation and thus discuss it within models based on science.

We cannot answer "What happens to YOU when/after you die?" and must either be content with "I dunno', or accept some belief about it, or use some other model to consider the possibilities.

[LMNO]

Only if you philisophically consider "YOU" to be more than the sum of your physical parts.

You are making an untestable hypothesis before you even ask the question.

[Triple Zero]

Easy, now.  Take a breath.

I'm not saying that Parsimony gives you the "right" answer, and that we should stop asking questions.

I just don't like Occam's razor. It can actually be wrong, you know? And not in the way you explain below.

I should grab some examples for this. I learned about it in Machine Learning. Cause for an automated reasoning system, implementing Occam's razor is a pretty good start. And (given that you counterbalance "simple" with "useful"), it actually leads to pretty good, intelligent results.

But there are also some situations, and not even just the "degenerative cases", where it will confidently pick the wrong answer.

... sorry I can't find an example now. This is interesting though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor#Subjective_razor
(scroll one paragraph up to "The statistical view leads to ..." and you might wanna follow the link on "Kolmogorov complexity", it's interesting and not as complex as it sounds, and relevant to the Razor and the notion of "simplest")

And, for the record, science is entirely based around "I don't know."

That is to say, "I don't know, and I want to find out."

Yes, but as been shown in this thread, "I don't know", absence of evidence, sometimes gets mistaken for evidence of absence.

Like when people claim consciousness zaps out of existence with death, and science proves this.

Now proper science would indeed say nothing about this. I suppose it's more the culture of Science that is smelly to me, the smugness, the part in people that don't just stop with "we can't prove it yet", but really must follow up with saying "but a lot of evidence (and my common superior sense) points to ...".

Testable: if electrical activity in the brain ceases after death.
Testable: the long-term coherence of electrical patterns after the energy source has depleted.
Untestable: YHVH carries your soul to heaven.
Untestable: Your heart is weighed, and you are reborn in accordance to how you lived your previous life.

Just FYI as an aside, the neurobiologists agree with me that there's quite a lot more than electrical activity going on that may be causing consciousness. In fact, it's mostly chemical, and not really all that much electrical.

The question at hand is, "What happens after you die?"  That question can be answered objectively through observation and testing, without speculation.  It can be answered scientifically, up to a point.  After that point, it can no longer be answered scientifically.

Well, science can test what happens to your body after you die.

I thought the actual question at hand is "What happens to your consciousness after you die?"

I thought the comparison with a knot was quite interesting. you tie a knot in a rope, then burn the rope. What happens to the knot?

Well, the knot would be gone, I suppose.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Only if you philisophically consider "YOU" to be more than the sum of your physical parts.

You are making an untestable hypothesis before you even ask the question.

I am asking a question that is not well suited for discussion in models based on scientific criteria.

[Triple Zero]

Only if you philisophically consider "YOU" to be more than the sum of your physical parts.

You are making an untestable hypothesis before you even ask the question.

Being more than the sum of its parts is what Emergence is all about.

And it's not really all that untestable.

It is, however, really really complex.

Take the knotted rope, is it more than the sum of its parts? I would consider a knotted rope to be "more" than a not knotted rope, but it still has the same parts.

Similarly, an anthill population 5000 I consider "more" than an arbitrary collection of 5000 ants.

[LMNO]

Occams razor can indeed be wrong, if you only use it once.  As more information becomes available, you need to keep seeing the best way it all fits together.  And you still might get it wrong.  It's like if you have the sentence, "I took _____ to the fucking wall, and never got my money back."  You can speculate, and try to find outside context, and do all sorts of experiments to figure out what that word might be, and you might be able to narrow it down to "it's probably a noun", but you can still get it wrong without more information.

As far as the knot in the rope question, it's semantic.  We use the word "knot" to describe a configuration of rope.

As an analogy to consciousness, it doesn't work very well, unless you postulate an infinite strand of consciousness that knots up in people-like objects.  Which is nice to think about, in a poetic sense.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I find this sort of discussion a prime candidate for Model Agnosticism.

We can use scientific models and discuss the observable phenomena related to human death.
We can use philosophical models to discuss the conceptual concepts of "I" and consciousness.
We can use metaphysical models to discuss what some people think happens at/after death.

In the end, they all are models though and all have their own criteria, their own limits and their own value... as long as we remember that they're models, not Reality.

[LMNO]

It might save a lot of arguing if we agree on which viewpoint we should use when talking about it first.

[Captain Utopia]

Say I could upload my entire consciousness into a robot - such that from the robots perspective, one moment it's a fleshy human with a lifetime of history, having its brain recorded by some device - and the next instant it's in a robot shell.  Now you could make the argument that my consciousness will survive as long as the robot does, fine.  But from my perspective, looking up at the robot who now thinks it is me... and has the lasers and rockets to prove it... well, I might beg to differ.

So to me, consciousness is a stream.  It may be possible to duplicate it, but when it ends, it ends.

Let's take Jesus Christ as an example, assuming he he was a singular real person two millennia ago, being somewhat of a charismatic rebel/cult leader who also happened to have some pretty good ideas about how great it would be if everybody would just be nice to eachother.

Now the ideas, and consciousness of Jesus Christ live on in a shitload of people's minds.

Have you ever had a conversation with a friend, or significant other, where they think they know you so well they finish your sentence or make assumptions on your behalf?  They may have a high success rate, but fuck it can be annoying when they get it completely wrong.  Why?  If they are talking to a friend of theirs who knows you less well, that friend is going to make even wilder assumptions.  Maybe your friend can, while their own consciousness survives, correct their friends assumptions.. but once they're gone your consciousness can only be a characterture compared to how you knew it.

So I think Jesus is dead.  Oral history, translated, subverted, translated, interpreted.. and you look to the people who claim the closest communion with Jesus now, and I hardly think that their idea of Jesus has much relation to the 2000 year dead consciousness.