Recent content by wpb

  1. W

    Kent Forbes, Does the Simulation Hypothesis Defeat Materialism |323|

    At the end of that (long, but interesting) Asimov Memorial Debate linked to earlier in the thread, Tyson asked the panelists what they thought the probability was that we live in a simulation. Gates' answer was 1%. Pat
  2. W

    Lucid Dreaming and The Scientific Method

    In my case that may well be true. I never exercised any conscious control over the dream, and though I suspected I was dreaming in the first part, I wasn't suspicious of the second part (after the false awakening). In my limited experience with lucid dreaming (I've had about a dozen LDs in my...
  3. W

    Lucid Dreaming and The Scientific Method

    Congratulations, Arouet, I hope you have many more. I don't know if your post triggered it, but this morning I dreamed that I had a lucid dream. I was trying to make my way to the balcony of a movie theater. This involved some risky maneuvers, switching between ladders and staircases. At a...
  4. W

    The (in)coherence of hard determinism as an alternative to free will

    I think they can be distinguished functionally or operationally, as we distinguish between chemistry and the underlying physics (I hope that's a good example; there may be better ones). If they can be distinguished, we can have a discussion of free will without necessarily bringing in the debate...
  5. W

    The (in)coherence of hard determinism as an alternative to free will

    I think you're referring to Relativity (and possibly Quantum Theory) here? To be honest, I hadn't even considered that. We could perhaps narrow the state of the universe down to the relevant part of the universe, which would be that which can influence the choice, and thus would (probably) be...
  6. W

    The (in)coherence of hard determinism as an alternative to free will

    I'm not sure whether you disagree with the specific wording or the general thrust of Laird's proposition. Re-framing it somewhat, would you agree that, excluding randomness, every human choice is determined by the state of the universe (including laws) at the time of the choice, which state...
  7. W

    The (in)coherence of hard determinism as an alternative to free will

    I think there are additional factors: the reason or reasons which prompted you to talk to the deceased cat at choice 1, and the reason or reasons which prompted you to gaze at the clouds at choice 4. These would likely be internal reasons, of which you may not even have been consciously aware...
  8. W

    Some Philosophical Arguments

    I don't know if that was addressed in the material I read (it's been a long time). I'll have to see if I can find the source. Pat
  9. W

    Some Philosophical Arguments

    That may not be as damning as it would first appear: http://www.math.ru.nl/~landsman/Born.pdf. My reading of the above is that no interpretation has been able to uncontroversially derive the Born rule. Pat
  10. W

    Some Philosophical Arguments

    Here's a far-out speculation (not original with me): The split occurs when the particle "chooses" to go through the left slit or the right slit. So we have two worlds, one where the particle went left and one where it went right. The interference pattern is caused by the interference between the...
  11. W

    Some Philosophical Arguments

    I think it's just human nature to seek deeper levels of explanation. IMO, inquiry can be roughly divided into three categories: what, how and why. "Shut up and calculate" stops at "what". QM interpretations attempt to address "how". Metaphysics/philosophy attempts to address "why". (I don't...
  12. W

    Some Philosophical Arguments

    For one thing, it's easy to imagine a quantum wavefunction ("probability wave") as a physical thing, propagating through space. Not so much with a matrix math operation. Pat
  13. W

    Some Philosophical Arguments

    AFAIK, all the interpretations use the same math and make the same predictions, and thus can't be distinguished experimentally (at least so far). There is some disagreement as to whether Bohm is an interpretation or a distinct theory. The probabilities in MWI relate to the likelihood of "landing...
  14. W

    A robot prepared for self-awareness

    Suppose medical technology advanced to the point where biological neurons could be replaced by artificial ones. If someone's neurons were replaced, one by one, at what point would the person no longer have consciousness? Pat
Back
Top