I mean I love spending time observing, thinking for myself, but lordie if I didn’t have references I can go to, or teacher I can pull up on YouTube (these days) to learn about what others have learned about the various observations or the many questions I dream up, don’t know what I’d do.
We people are breast sucklers, from our first moments we are embedded within society and are a part of them, even the “loners” need to touch base with human society.
Oh and there’s another aspect to the long wolf fantasy: “We need each other to keep ourselves honest.”
Since we humans fall into self-delusion so easily.
Of course, there are those who believe we are just biological machines and there is nothing more. I find it interesting that they seem to believe that a machine could “believe” anything and especially interesting that a machine could make a choice of what to believe.
It’s called “being programmed”.
Sometimes I am astounded by the choices of what you believe, But then I realize you are just another biological machine, programmed for survival.
Unfortunately, you couldn’t be more wrong, at least with today’s science. Science, as we practice it today, is limited to describing shared and repeatable experiences. Science cannot address any sort of “non-physical” experience and certainly cannot posit “non-physical” explanations for any experience without violating the basic philosophy of science. It will take a major change in our approach to discovery in order for us to achieve what you hope for.
Indeed we do seem to need each other. Odd, that a programmed machine would be programmed to fail due to the lack of other machines. I doubt most people would would associate such a need with a mechanical device.
So, if there’s a program, does it not follow that there is/was a programmer?
No, Evolution by natural selection is the stochastic programmer of everything in the universe. The reason this is true, is the mathematical essence of Universal processes.
All natural phenomena have mathematically self-organized over long periods of time from simple to complex patterns.
No motivated intent is required. Mathematics is the quasi-intelligent programming guide.
An Intelligent Designer is not required and the concept of God is superfluous.
Note: I am not addressing the concept of a man-invented spiritual guiding philosophy.
Buddhism is such a philosophy.
There are many philosophies and interpretations within Buddhism, making it a tolerant and evolving religion. Some scholars don’t recognize Buddhism as an organized religion, but rather, a “way of life” or a “spiritual tradition .” … Followers of Buddhism can worship in temples or in their own homes.Oct 12, 2017
Buddhism encourages its people to avoid self-indulgence but also self-denial.
Buddha’s most important teachings, known as The Four Noble Truths, are essential to understanding the religion.
I don’t believe anything is random. We have no evidence of anything being other than a continuation of something previous. Every continuation comes only by means of preconditions which eliminate randomness.
I’m not sure whether to accept evolution of function purely as a consequence of growth. Of course, whatever changes have happened during evolution must have been predictable, that is to say possible and likely.
I don’t believe anything is random. We have no evidence of anything being other than a continuation of something previous. Every continuation comes only by means of preconditions which eliminate randomness.
That’s where the mathematical functions come in. There is no randomness. It’s all very orderly and deterministic.
Mathematical patterns even emerge spontaneously from initial chaotic conditions.
Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary theory and branch of mathematics focusing on the study of chaos: dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are actually governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
“Randomness” might be where you stumble. I usually stick to “probabilities”. We might then agree, that everything has a probability of happening one way or another, or several possible ways, but there is some finite end to that. But here’s where chaos theory comes in. Chaos theory doesn’t eliminate randomness, but it says there are things that are at a low probability, yet we know they happen. We don’t know how probable they are because they happen rarely, and if we are talking about cellular changes, we can’t detect them anyway, let alone detect them often enough so we can predict them, or assign a probability.
This is how you make a Mandelbrot set. A pattern emerges from the random/low probability actions, but we can’t predict exactly how that pattern will appear. It’s also how evolution works.
Some see order only in patterns, even mathematical functions. Probability depends on how samples are taken. I accept that what we see today is orderly no matter how random or chaotic it may appear to be.
Everything that has happened had a 100 percent possibility and a 100 percent probability of happening. Everything that did not happen had a zero percent possibility and a zero percent probability of happening. History has had only one course. What happened did happen because it was the only thing that could have happened. What did not happen couldn’t have happened.
To me, the appearance of randomness or chaos is just an admission of our inability to see the entire situation.
Some see order only in patterns, even mathematical functions. Probability depends on how samples are taken. I accept that what we see today is orderly no matter how random or chaotic it may appear to be.
I believe that Chaos Theory explains the underlying order in apparent chaos.
Everything that has happened had a 100 percent possibility and a 100 percent probability of happening. Everything that did not happen had a zero percent possibility and a zero percent probability of happening. History has had only one course. What happened did happen because it was the only thing that could have happened. What did not happen couldn’t have happened.
I disagree with that. If something has not yet happened , it may very well still happen in the future. That is the nature of probability. A low probability may take a long time to become manifest.
To me, the appearance of randomness or chaos is just an admission of our inability to see the entire situation.
Again, Fractal Theory does address apparent randomness. Fractals are able to create infinite patterns.
IMO, There is only a limited number of regular patterns.
i.e. Pi is an irregular pattern and that’s why it is called “transcendent”. There are several such patterns that are unable to form by their very inability to repeat regularly.
No. You will not be born to a different mother. Nothing “different” will ever happen.
Whatever will happen has a 100 percent probability. Anything with less than a 100 percent probability won’t happen.
If fractals could “create” anything real - they can’t - then the entire universe would be a fractal. Fractals are imaginary.
I agree there “is” only a limited number of regular (or irregular) patterns and those are the ones that have happened and exist today.
Pi is imaginary. There is no ratio of the diameter of a real circle to the circumference of that circle, because there is no way a real circle can be formed. Look up how Pi is calculated. That process explains it much better than I can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xowA7Z5aee0
Whatever will happen has a 100 percent probability. Anything with less than a 100 percent probability won’t happen.
That is only partly true, while everything that happened had a 100% probability, not all probability has necessarily become reality, but given sufficient time and space any probability greater than 1% almost certainly results in expression.
Potential = That which “may” become reality. Which means that all reality was preceded by potential, but not all potential must necessarily become reality.
David Bohm addressed this in his book “Wholeness and the Implicate order”, where he explains that reality must be implicated by causal potentials before it can become reality. I believe that is the foundation for “evolutionary processes via natural selection”.
Example: a mountain lake has the potential for it’s water to be used to generate electricity via gravity feed. But unless a water driven generator is installed downstream that potential remains just that, potential without expression in reality.
I think Pi illustrates that there is an infinite number and expressions of probabilities.
Every circle is just another expression of Pi (or an approximation) and potentially there are an infinite number of circles and not all of them have become expressed yet.
Probability has nothing to do with things that have happened. Once something happens, there is no way to predict that it happened. “Predict that it happened” is not a thing.
IBL, all you stated was the idea that the universe is determined. I’m fine with that, but you need the entire universe full of data to predict what will happen anywhere in that universe. You need a computer that is as big as the universe, plus the computer itself. You need a universe, then a way to stand outside of it and read the 100% accurate output prediction. We don’t have that.
Real would be physical. The only way to get a real circle would be to have objects, including the ink or graphite particles in a drawing, of an infinitely small size, meaning that they would be undefined. Anything posited as infinitely large or small is imaginary. Real things aren’t made of imaginary things.
You seem to be suggesting that Pi in this case would have a determined finite value.
